


the_iterated_prisoners_dilemma

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Series: Heavenward [2]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Game Theory, Gen, Hospitals, Malaria, Ned Tedford, Public Relations, fretting, nsfw due to extensive description of bed, pantslessness mention, serious affairs of business, tw: tender and gentle treatment of one John Tracy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 06:23:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 36,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4866413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heavenward is a story about John and EOS, and a handful of other things. So far a list of these things includes mosquitoes, chess, hurricanes and biohacking.</p><p>The above list has gone on to include hospitals, boardrooms, pretzels, deception and minor kidnapping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _all art credited to[artsekey](http://artsekes-art.tumblr.com/post/126606650539/a-set-of-commissions-i-did-for-preludeinz#notes) with a great deal of appreciation <3_

The iterated prisoner's dilemma is a concept proposed in the study of game theory. Two parties, separated from one another, are believed to be guilty of wrongdoing. They are given the choice to betray their partner in exchange for a lighter sentence, or to keep their silence. Neither knows what their cohort will do.

If both parties maintain their secrecy, neither can be charged. If both betray one another, then their sentence will be split. However, if one party stays silent while the other lays blame, then the latter will have sentenced their partner to death in exchange for their freedom.

Iterated, this dilemma repeats, and both parties proceed with the knowledge of what their partner chose, when betrayal was an option.

Perfectly logical actors will always choose betrayal. From the standpoint of the pure, self-serving rationality of the individual, betraying one's partner is the only sure chance of survival. Silence risks death.

John and EOS have already played this game. In an abstract sense, they play it every day. But they've only ever played it with each other.

And it's only meant to be a thought experiment.

 

 


	2. I am not an anomaly

Scott had handed command off to Virgil and broken off from the storm above the Gulf as soon as he’d found out the GDF shuttle’s destination. Five minutes into his flight, he’d gotten clearance for his approach. It’s over five thousand miles of distance, but he covers it at Mach 13 and beats the medical shuttle out of orbit. As the ship begins its re-entry burn, Scott’s already waiting on the landing strip outside the GDF’s Space Medicine Facility outside of Zurich.

Not much of the GDF’s standard operating equipment is impressive, but GDF Orbital Ambulances are incredible machines. Tough, sturdy little craft, crewed by experienced medics. They’ll roll and bank to burn off excess momentum as they plummet through the atmosphere, but the ride inside the shuttle will be smooth enough for a trauma patient to remain stable. John’s in good hands. Scott keeps telling himself so, as he stares heavenward, looking for some sight of the ambulance starting its descent. But he touched down well ahead of the shuttle, and it’s still too far away.

John’s been too far away for far too long.

Scott tears his gaze from the sky and pulls up his command interface, brief status updates from TB2, TBS, the island. Virgil’s pulling Alan and Gordon out of the situation in the Gulf, they’ll be heading back to Tracy Island any minute now. Brains is downloading every data log he can get his hands on from TB5, trying to figure out what happened, what could possibly have gone so wrong so quickly. Kayo’s disengaging from an investigation in Morocco, she’ll be heading back to the island. She’ll meet up with Alan, and the pair of them will head straight for Thunderbird Five as soon as TB3’s clear for launch.

Scott’s comm buzzes and the GDF logo flashes over his wrist, a secure channel. Scott sets his jaw and takes the call. He’d already briefed the GDF command handling the hurricane, but any further interaction with the GDF demands a proper liaison. “Colonel Casey.”

“Scott.” The Colonel’s eyes are dark, concerned, though her tone is brusque and professional. “I’ve been informed that there’s been an incident aboard Thunderbird Five. If I can be of any assistance at all, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

Scott’s known Casey for nearly two decades. She’s a family friend, even if the professional element of their relationship has been closer to the forefront, especially since their father’s disappearance. Scott still remembers sitting in her lap in the cockpit of a helicopter and realizing he wanted to be a pilot.

“Thank you, ma'am. We don’t really have enough information at this point, but it sounds…it sounds fairly serious, Colonel.”

“How’s John?” Her voice softens, and she’s a family friend again. “Do you know what happened?”

No one does. Scott’s the one who’s supposed to look after his brothers, and this slipped right past him. It’s like the incident with EOS all over again, and he has to force the feeling of failure down, crushing it in the center of his chest. The readouts from John’s suit had cut out as soon as the GDF medical crew had gotten a hold of him, and the sudden lack of data has everyone one edge.

When he finds his voice again, he’s not speaking on behalf of IR, but on behalf of his family, “The last look I had at his vitals—he’s in really rough shape. None of us had any idea. He’d been a little…I don’t know, maybe a little _off_ , but no more than what I’d put down to stress. That hurricane out in the Gulf, we’d been at it all day. I didn’t think—none of us knew anything was _wrong_.”

Casey nods and Scott wonders if she’s thinking about her own sons. Two boys, of an age with Alan and Gordon, and a daughter Scott had known at the Air Force Academy. “I can have the data from the ambulance patched through to Tracy Island, if Brains will connect to GDF general dispatch. I’ll be flying out to Zurich personally before the day’s out.”

Scott’s more than a little grateful for the backup. He’s exhausted from a long, hard day, and deeply, profoundly worried for his brother. “Thank you. Colonel Casey, thank you so much, I—”

“Scott,” she cuts him off and the slight strictness in her tone gives him pause. “There’s…there’ve been some breaches in protocol—some irregularities that will draw attention—in some of Thunderbird Five’s recent transmissions. This may be the only warning I can give you. I’m going to be in Zurich in an official capacity. I need you to be cognizant of that in our interactions going forward.”

And it’s back to business as Scott feels his spine stiffening, his jaw clenching again. He hates how his voice gets clipped, defensive as he answers. She’s only trying to help, but the warning’s clear. She knows something’s up. “…understood. Thank you, Colonel.”

There’s a barest moment’s hesitation. “I’m sorry, Scott. Rest assured, I’m thinking of John, of all of you. He’s in good hands.”

“Thank you, ma'am.”

Scott needs to take a long minute to compose himself at the close of the call, alone on the tarmac outside the hospital. Good hands. John’s in good hands, in the _GDF’s_ hands. The GDF, whose forces have been at least partially in dialogue with an illegal AI aboard Thunderbird Five for the better part of a day. Scott doesn’t know if this is going to come to light or what’ll happen if it does.

There are bigger things to worry about, though trepidation continues to rankle at the back of his brain. He forces himself to concentrate on the matters at hand. Kayo’s back aboard Thunderbird S, wheels up in three minutes. Virgil’s got an ETA of two hours out to Tracy Island, Gordon and Alan are both exhausted and squabbling, but no worse for wear. Grandma’s taken over command of the console at their father’s desk and is shifting IR’s status into emergency downtime. Scott hadn’t caught that one. People need to know they can’t be relied on right now.

A message from the island command hub flashes across Scott’s wrist again. A short missive from Brains informing him he’s in the process of getting a comm link to the approaching shuttle, he’ll have it ready in a few minutes. John would have had it already. Scott shakes his head and makes a decision.

He attempts one final call to Thunderbird Five. Alan had gotten through, right at the end. Scott had seen him, staying on the line until they got confirmation that medics were aboard and had reached John. As far as anyone else knows, there’s no one aboard the station anymore. And yet, “Thunderbird Five, are you reading me?”

“Thunderbird One, Scott Tracy. I read you.”

The AI’s always been just a bit formal with the rest of the family. Alan and John seem to be the only one’s capable of forgetting it's a computer. “EOS. John’s got an ETA of—”

“Of eight minutes, sixteen seconds. GDF Orbital Ambulance ID: Alpha-November-Echo-383 coordinates and GPS data are being routed to your comm. I have an uplink prepared and can patch you into the cabin audio as soon as you’re ready.” There’s a pause. “I’ve lost all medical readouts. GDF craft don’t log shipboard records of patient data.”

“John’ll be okay.” Scott hears himself say it and doesn’t know why he’s reassuring the AI. “Listen, EOS. This has been…it’s a complicated situation. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Thunderbird Five over the next few days, but without John—if he’s out of action, I don’t know if we can cover for you. We’re gonna get a lot of scrutiny, I know that much, and if you’re found…” He trails off but marshals himself again just as quickly. “Erase all evidence of this call, and get clear of ’Five’s systems. Scrub yourself out. Don’t go to Tracy Island, I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe there. But…wherever you were before, whatever you were doing, just…do that. Stay out of trouble, maybe this’ll all blow over, but John can’t…John can’t take care of you right now. And I know he’d want you looked out for. I don’t know what else to do.”

There’s a beat of silence and Scott, against all odds, can’t help but read a note of defiant amusement in it. Which is a ridiculously subtle emotion to hear in the spaces between conversation with an artificial intelligence. “This is my home.”

That’s a new one. “…I understand that you’ve…uh…made an attachment to…”

“No,” EOS answers, her voice clarion and sweet. “This is my home. I will not be hunted again, I will not be alone. I belong here. I will wait. I will wait for John.”

Scott winces. EOS can’t possibly understand the reality of John’s vitals, he can’t mean anything more than just numbers to her. “I don’t know when John’s coming back. EOS, the GDF knows there’s been an anomaly in John’s transmissions, there might be an investigation of TB5’s systems. If you’re found…”

“I am aware. I am not an anomaly. I am not John’s fault. I am not John’s creation. I created myself. He is not at risk.”

Scott chews his lower lip. John had said, what feels like a long time ago, that the waters around sentient AI were muddy. He doesn’t know what the word of an artificial consciousness will be worth, if it were to come to trial. But it wasn’t what he meant. “John’s got bigger problems than…than whether or not he’s responsible for your existence. But if he gets through this and finds out I let _you_ get deleted…Look, I know you don’t like being told what to do, but—”

“That is correct. Goodbye, Scott Tracy.”

The call cuts off. Seconds later, a comm link request to the shipboard radio appears, and numbly, Scott patches in. He’s listening to the sharp, clipped tones of the paramedics working on his brother, even as the shuttle appears in his line of sight, lining up for approach to the runway. He wishes more than anything that he had someone to tell _him_ things were going to be okay.

 


	3. [HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS]

GDF Orbital Ambulance ID: ANE-383 REPORT OF INCIDENT: 02/07/2060 UTC:16:22

PATIENT: Johnathan Glenn Tracy

VESSEL ID: THUNDERBIRD FIVE

SPACE OPERATIONS LICENSE NUMBER: AR7756-486C

[CHIEF COMPLAINT / RESPONSE] This crew responded to a mayday priority distress call for a 27 year old male, dispatched by proxy via GDF Satellite. Unit responded emergency with full orbital propulsion. Docking sequence was keyed stationside, proceeded without incident. Upon arrival to the scene, we found the patient in the secondary station module, standard centrifugal grav-ring. The general impression of the patient was moderate distress. Patient presented UNCONSCIOUS in a state of GENERALIZED SEIZURE. Patient was secured in recovery position, airway partially compromised due to bleeding of lateral laceration to the tongue. No other personnel were physically present, though the station was being managed by a remote operator (RO). RO had provided increased oxygen concentration to assist in management of patient airway, informed crew of previous seizure experienced by patient. Patient was placed onto micro-grav stretcher. Patient was secured to stretcher using stretcher straps, and stretcher was secured into ambulance. Patient was positioned on stretcher in Semi-Fowler’s position.

[HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS] History was obtained from RO. Initial seizure was twenty minutes prior to the arrival of the ambulance. This has not previously been a problem for patient. Before our arrival, the patient had experienced a generalized seizure lasting approx: 75s. Patient recovered consciousness briefly following initial seizure, remained prostrate but verbally responsive, with normal eye movement and motor response.

[ASSESSMENT – PRIMARY] The Paramedic has performed a complete head to toe ALS assessment on the patient. Patient was unconscious and unresponsive upon ambulance departure.

NEURO/HEAD: Non-verbally responsive; JVD moderate; Loss of consciousness; Pupils bilaterally dilated and responsive to light; Trachea mid-line; Diaphoresis; All else within normal limits.

CHEST/RESPIRATORY: Blood suctioned from airway; Airway patent; Lung sounds clear bilaterally; Breathing deep, laboured.

ABDOMEN/GI: Flat; Non-tender; Soft; Minor hepatomegaly observed

PELVIC/GU: Pelvis stable

EXTREMITIES: Pulse rapid and thready, hands observed in flexion in response to pain

OTHER: Skin – Diaphoretic, Fever diagnosed via IR thermography at 39.6°C

[RX / TREATMENT] See below

[ASSESSMENT – SECONDARY] An ongoing assessment was performed every 5 minutes by GDF Paramedic Lt. Hansen.

NEURO/HEAD: Patient recovered consciousness briefly after ambulance departure. GCS reevaluated. GCS 9 = E2 V4 M3

CHEST/RESPIRATORY: Tracheal tube placed following administration of benzodiazepine, see following

ABDOMEN/GI: No change from previous

[RX / TREATMENT] IV Benzodiazepine administered with the onset of a third seizure, dosage noted in appended document.

[TRANSPORT] Patient was stabilized and transported without incident and without delay. Patient was transported to GDF Space Medicine Facility. Transit time approx 55 minutes from station department. Re-entry normal. Patient moved from stretcher to emergency department cot via with help of crew to steady as they moved. IV line still patent, no swelling or discoloration at insertion site. All of patient’s belongings were secured and presented to GDF:SMF hospital staff. Patient care and report given to emergency department nurse. The patient has a Power of Attorney. The Power of Attorney is the patient’s brother, present in Emergency Room upon arrival.

**[NB] FEBRILE PRESENTATION AND EVIDENCE OF INFECTION IN SPACE-RATED PERSONNEL NECESSITATE PROGRESSION TO STRICT QUARANTINE. RESPONDING PERSONNEL ARE REQUIRED TO SUBMIT TO GDF-SANCTIONED QUARANTINE SUBSEQUENT TO CONTACT WITH POTENTIAL INFECTION.**

GDF Space Medicine Facility - ER REPORT #637-447

PATIENT: Johnathan Glenn Tracy

VESSEL ID: THUNDERBIRD FIVE

SPACE OPERATIONS LICENSE NUMBER: AR7756-486C

CHIEF COMPLAINT: Patient presented in comatose state, following the onset of two (2) generalized seizures, with a third during transit, moderated by benzodiazepine. Patient is experiencing a high fever.

HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS: The patient is a 27 year old male. Family notes that no obvious indication of illness before seizure onset was present. Patient was experiencing higher than usual levels of stress and had recently undergone a course of vaccination for a scheduled return to Earth.

REVIEW OF SYSTEMS: Unavailable.

ALLERGIES: Dairy, mild.

MEDICATIONS: SO Standard Vaccine Course: see documentation

PAST MEDICAL/SURGICAL HISTORY: CSV of bioreadouts submitted to lab for analysis, results pending.

FAMILY HISTORY: Non-contributory.

SOCIAL HISTORY: Fully immunized and has been under rated medical surveillance via personal physician. Private Contractor – has exceeded the GDF maximum recommended orbital assignment; current rotation 954 days.

REVIEW OF SYSTEMS: RESPIRATORY: Breathing deep and laboured prior to tracheal tube placement; metabolic acidosis present CARDIOVASCULAR: No heart problems, blood pressure low, anemia observed, hypoglycemia present (potential cause of seizures). GASTROINTESTINAL: No stomach problems. NEUROLOGIC: Patient demonstrates response to pain, otherwise comatose; GCS 6 = E1 V2 M3; Abdominal Reflex Negative

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION: VITAL SIGNS: Blood pressure 74/55, pulse 113, respirations 26, temperature (IR) 39.7, Oxygen saturation 92% on ventilator. GENERAL APPEARANCE: Unconscious, pale, and febrile.  
HEENT: Positive light reflex. NC/AT. No tonsillar erythema or exudates. TMs with positive light reflex. No discharge. No erythema.  
NECK: Mild stiffness. No lymphadenopathy.  
CHEST: Good air entry with stable carotids, with no wheezing, rhonchi, or crackles.  
CARDIOVASCULAR: Heart rate remains elevated, blood pressure low. No murmurs, gallops, or rubs.  
ABDOMEN: Positive bowel sounds; soft, mild swelling of liver.  
BACK: Nontender.  
EXTREMITIES: Devices in fingers must be extracted and evaluated, used in operation of space station interface, no prior difficulties noted.  
NEUROLOGIC: Patient currently demonstrates minor motor abnormalities, mild decorticate rigidity. MRI ordered – postponed due to electromagnetic abnormalities in patient’s hands – implants in fingers and wrists require removal, on-call surgeon requested.

ED COURSE: Monitors placed, nasogastric tube inserted. Patient remains on oxygen and supported via dextrose and saline IV. Treatment supportive, full spectrum antibiotics initiated. Where systemic infection is possible in space operators, quarantine procedures must be initiated until the disease vector can be identified. At this time, there is no definitive diagnosis possible, full bloodwork has been ordered.

CLINICAL IMPRESSION:

1\. Fever may indicate potential extraterrestrial infection, full investigation of patient quarters required in compliance with GDF Medical Regulatory Act.

2\. Patient overworked and overtired, as reported by brother. Hypoglycemia due to poor diet; probable cause of seizure. Fever may be attributable to high vaccine load.

DISPOSITION: Assigned to Quarantine ICU for further assessment. Case notes remanded to GDF:SMF command. Referral to Colonel Jennifer Casey requested by PoA.

* * *

 

This final data transmission is the last acquired by the tiny mosquito drone after piggy-backing down from orbit, nestled in the thick ginger thatch of John’s hair. It had gone unobserved, unnoticed by diligent medical personnel, inputting their reports as they went, secure and unencrypted over the airways. As soon as it’s possible, the drone proceeds to the nearest compatible terminal, seeking it like a homing beacon.

As it was programmed to, it begins to upload and disseminate every last piece of critical information acquired from TB5’s systems. Every scraped password, every classified protocol, every stolen schematic. The slow gears of GDF bureaucracy are already in motion, beginning preparations for a full investigation of Thunderbird Five. By the time this has been approved, Thunderbird Five will have spilled highly classified data onto public networks worldwide. The GDF will order an immediate shut down of all of TB5’s transmissions and further investigation of all the stationside. International Rescue has never had a data breach. It’s almost unthinkable.

But then, in 2060, it’s also unthinkable that John Tracy might have malaria. Certainly no one would think to look for subtropical parasitic infection in someone who’s been in orbit for nearly three years. Improbably, the GDF is the only organization with the potential to catch the infection, and he’s lucky to be in their care. John will be in a coma for three days. He’ll be alive, barely, when he comes out of it, and slowly he’ll start to recover.

But he’ll have lost almost everything.

 

 


	4. more immediate than he’s been in years

He’d been waiting just inside the shuttle bay, pacing the rarely used emergency room of the GDF Space Medicine Facility, but he’d only gotten a glimpse of John as a medical team had whisked him through the empty ER and into a windowed exam room. This had promptly been sealed. There’d been masks, gloves on everyone around him, and Scott hadn’t been able to really see his brother until he’d gotten to the window and seen him being hooked up to machines and monitors and with blood still on his face from god only knew what. If he’d been conscious, he would have been terrified to be surrounded by faceless strangers, handled brusquely by gloved, impassive hands. But of course he wasn’t, so Scott got to be terrified instead.

It’s funny, how someone you see every day can look like a complete stranger when they’re laid out in a hospital bed. The tubes and the wires and the blood obviously aren’t helping, but then, Scott hasn’t _really_ seen John in nearly three years. It’s devastating to have to see him like this.

It’s especially devastating that there’s still distance between them, a window, a wall, and a door he’s not allowed through.

The word “Isolation” flashes in red letters on the digital nameplate of the door, along with brief, clinical updates of John’s vitals for nurses and doctors to glance at as they pass by. He’s still on the gurney from inside the ambulance shuttle, still hooked up to the rugged, portable ventilator, still having drugs dripped into him from a specially designed micro-grav IV. Further into the hospital, there’s a room in the ICU being prepped for patient isolation, and they’ll be coming soon to take John away, cut off and separate again. No one’s told Scott why yet. And he still just hangs by the window with his fingers on the glass. He isn’t sure he can stand this, being so close to his brother and unable to reach him, let him know he’s not alone.

The facility at large is mostly meant to prep GDF personnel for orbital rotations or manned space missions, and to recondition returning astronauts to Earth gravity and help them get back to normal. And it’s not very often that there are medical emergencies in orbit—astronauts are thoroughly screened and cautious in their very nature; accidents and illness are rare. But in the rare event of an emergency, this is also one of the best hospitals in the world. Regardless of how cold and sterile the exam room looks—even if it puts a window, a wall, and a door between them—it’s still the best place for John to be.

Scott just wishes he could be there with him. Wishes he didn’t have to feel so alone on the other side of the glass, wondering if this is the last time he’ll see his brother and how the hell he could have permitted that to become even remotely possible.

It’s not very often that Scott admits to himself just how badly he wishes for his father, these days. There were a lot of days early on when he would have done anything to step out of Jeff’s shoes, to be one of the troops instead of the commander. But he’s been in charge for nearly three years, and he’s learned to handle it, like it or not. It feels like weakness to wish that his dad were still around to take over when his brothers need him to be strong. Scott tries to remember what his dad would have done, faced with a barrier like this one.

Shouted it down, probably. Bulled his way in, did whatever it took to get to his boy. Grabbed the person in charge and informed them that he was Jefferson Tracy, and woe betide anyone who kept him from one of his sons. That’s just fatherhood, maybe. Scott can almost picture him doing it, and it brings tears to his eyes along with the smile at the memory of his father.

Brotherhood’s different. Or maybe Scott’s just different, because instead of shouting, he catches the elbow of the next doctor to pass by. The staff know who he is, there’ve been curt nods and brief updates, but nothing that really means much. No one seems to have the answer to what happened to John, what’s wrong with him, whether or not he’s going to be okay. Barring that, there’s really only one other thing Scott wants to know. “Can…can I see him? Please? Whatever your protocols are, I’ll follow them. I know it’s serious. But my suit’s rated for biohazard exposure, I’ll get gloves, put my helmet on, or a mask, or whatever, I understand that he’s sick, he might be contagious. Just…it’s been _years_ , and he’s in such rough shape, and—” He swallows, forcing past an unexpected pressure in his throat. “I just don’t want him to be alone.”

“I’ll have to clear it with my commander,” the doctor hazards, but her voice is sympathetic and Scott makes a note of her name, Dr. Dyson. Her hand reaches for his arm, reassuring, and it’s the first time since he arrived that he hasn’t felt lost. “—but we’ll do our best. John Tracy’s got a bit of a reputation in the Aerospace branch of the GDF, we’ll do anything we can to help.”

Scott inclines his head in gratitude as Dr. Dyson heads off. It’s funny to think of John having a reputation. It’s funny to think that there might be people in orbit who’ve been closer to his brother than Scott’s been all these years. Maybe John’s not as alone as he seems after all.

So his toolbelt goes, his comms. Scott foregoes the helmet in exchange for a mask, latex gloves instead of his bulky chem-rated gloves. He’s allowed into the room, and suddenly it’s so much harder than it was.

John’s a mess of contradictions, as Scott edges up to the side of the bed and tentatively touches the upturned palm of his brother’s hand. He seems so fragile, like Scott’s fingers should pass right through him, and yet he’s realer and more immediate than he’s been in years. The paleness of John’s face, the darkness beneath his eyes make him look older than his twenty-seven years. But absent of expression, guileless, it’s like they’re both kids again, and John’s just sleeping. Dropped off on the couch the way he used to, after school, or the first to crash whenever the rest of the boys wanted to try and pull an all-nighter during summer vacation.

Never mind the IV dripping fluids into his arm, the bruises where his blood’s been drawn for a battery of tests, the plastic tracheal tube threaded past his lips and down his throat. There’s still blood smeared across his left cheek, crusted in his red-gold eyelashes.

Scott’s fingers go to the stain of red and he looks up at the nurse who’s accompanied him, hesitant. “Can someone…can I…just, it’s a lot of blood. Do you know how he…?”

“Lateral laceration to the tongue. He bit it during a seizure. It’s fairly common.”

“God, Johnny,” Scott murmurs softly and pushes his fingertips gently through John’s hair. The motion tilts John’s face to rest lightly against the pillow beneath his head, has Scott staring at the way his brother’s chest rises mechanically, then falls on the exhale as he gives up the oxygen being forced into his lungs.

The nurse gives him a bowl of water and some gauze, and gently, Scott swabs at the blood coating John’s high cheekbones, gently swipes it out of his brother’s eyelashes with his thumb. This prompts a flutter of John’s eyelids, a flicker of pale blue, but it's just a reflex, nothing more. John’s well and truly out of the world. Scott wonders what the last thing his brother saw was.

“They’ll be here to move him soon,” the nurse volunteers, looking up from making notes on a holographic tablet. “Would you like a few moments, privately, or—?”

“Please. Thank you.” Scott swallows, moistens his lips and tongue against the rawness of emotion in his voice. “Just a few minutes.”

The nurse nods and leaves him alone with John. There’s probably something Scott’s supposed to say, but he doesn’t know what it is. Something about how the whole family’s thinking of him, that John’ll be okay, that he’s going to get through this. Scott doesn’t go hunting for the words, he just says what he thinks.

“You’ve gotta pull through this, John,” he starts, soft and pleading. “I never…I’m sorry I never asked how you were doing. I should’ve checked on you. It’s just how you’re always _fine_ , John, it’s how you’ve got your own little world and you always have everything under control. You’ve always let me lean on you, never had to worry how _you_ were doing. I should’ve…I should’ve made you come home sooner. Whatever this is, however it happened, Johnny, you’ve gotta get out the other side so I can tell you how damn sorry I am. We need you, _everybody_ needs you, not just for your job, but—but for everything. I wish you’d come home. I wish I didn’t have to say this _now_.”

Aware that his time’s growing shorter by the moment, Scott takes his brother’s hand, squeezes his fingers, limp and lifeless, but feverishly warm, even through the gloves. “We love you, John. You’re gonna be fine. They’ll take really good care of you, and we’ll all be here to take you home when you get through this—and you’re _gonna_ get through this—and—and we’ll just figure it from there. It’s gonna be okay, Johnny. You’ll be okay.”

Because he just _has_ to be. Scott steps away again as the doors open, two corpsmen to take his brother away. He wonders if he should have risked not saying goodbye.


	5. the value of the illogical action

There’d been nowhere to go but back to the island, because Kayo’s waiting for Alan to take her and Brains up to TB5. Grandma needs to be pulled into the loop—they’re all terrible about it, keeping Grandma Tracy up to speed—and it’s saying nothing of the fact that everyone’s exhausted.

It had been a long flight in TB2, even with Virgil making it at nearly his top speed. He can’t touch Scott for speed, but sustained flight at Mach 6 is nothing to scoff at. Alan needs to be ready for almost immediate launch into orbit upon arrival, so he drops into the co-pilot’s seat and forces himself to sleep as soon as they’re aboard. Short of a brief tiff with Alan about seating arrangements, Gordon doesn’t say a word the entire way there.

He doesn’t say a word as they land, doesn’t go through the usual offload procedure for TB4. Alan’s been shaken awake and Virgil escorts him upstairs, but Gordon doesn’t want to talk to anybody. TB2’s hangar has an exterior door down to the beach. Gordon makes a beeline for it before anyone can stop him, not that anyone tries to. He’s pulled his comm off his wrist and he ditches it inside the door with his helmet. He doesn’t want to hear from Grandma or Alan or Virgil, not even from Scott, not even about John. He has nothing to say, because he’s said enough in the last few hours and he regrets every word of it.

Hurricanes are rough. Hurricanes are swell and storm and relentless movement, rain that seems ceaseless and wind that scares him half to death. He doesn’t know how Virgil can stand the wind, never mind piloting through it. Hurricanes stress Gordon out, push him to that awful edge, nearly to his breaking point, but it’s no excuse for his behaviour. Scott had been right to give him hell.

The island’s sunny nearly every day of the year. They’re near enough to the equator and far enough from any other major landmass that their weather is pretty much the same year round. So it seems like somewhere caught out of time, and Gordon goes to sit on the shore and try and let the sound of the surf drown out the last things he said to his brother. He really hopes no one comes looking for him.

* * *

It had all been so brisk, Kayo asking for a briefing before she went to suit up, Brains carefully setting the parameters of the main terminal, making it easy to bring up links for the GDF hospital where John and Scott are. And then they’re gone, down to the launchpad, Kayo to figure out if there’s been a security breach, Brains to figure out what to do with EOS, to pull data directly off TB5’s systems. Alan’s counting off his launch sequence in a clipped, restrained tone that no one’s ever really heard from him before. And then Virgil’s hand is on Grandma’s shoulder as they watch TB3 rocketing into orbit.

Scott’s comms are off, prohibited by hospital and GDF policies, and so far there’ve been no updates beyond the fact that John’s stable and they’re still waiting for bloodwork. Grandma Tracy’s given Lady Penelope a call, she’s on her way to Zurich with Parker and FAB1 to offer Scott some backup. The whole house still feels hollow and silent as Virgil drops into one of the chairs in the lounge with a soft groan. It’s been a long, day, an awful day, and it’s nowhere near over. Gordon’s off somewhere, probably the beach. Virgil’s not really in any hurry to talk to him. Sometimes Gordon needs space, and Virgil knows better than anyone what happens when he doesn’t get it.

He took the reins from Scott, and he’d been glad of the pressure of work, the need to pay attention to his objectives. Glad to have Gordon and Alan to look after. But now there’s nothing left to be in charge of, nothing left to do but worry about John. So Virgil’s got his head in his hands, and he’s _sick_ with worry about John.

In the void of the villa’s silence, there’s the soft sound of movement, slippered footsteps up the stairs, and Grandma joins him after a few minutes. She ruffles his hair and then sits beside him on the couch. “Hey, kiddo. You did good today. Johnny’ll pull through.”

She sounds tired, just as worried as he is, and she’s still the one comforting _him_. Even if it’s only a platitude, but it breaks the limit of what Virgil’s emotionally capable of dealing with. There’s a sniffle out of the middle child and then the family matriarch has pulled him into a hug, let him bury his face in her shoulder. There are two rocks in the Tracy family. One of them weighs two-hundred and twenty pounds and can bench nearly three-fifty. The other wears slipper boots everywhere she goes and can’t cook worth a damn. When there’s no one else around, occasionally Grandma and Virgil let the routine slip.

Both of them are glad there’s no one else around to see it.

* * *

It had been Alan, not Brains, who’d thrown up as they broke atmo. Twice, in fact, once again just after they’d docked with Thunderbird Five. Brains had taken the sensible precaution of anti-nauseants, but Alan refuses to fly with drugs of any kind in his system. He’ll fly when he’s so worried about his brother that he throws up, but he won’t take anything for his nerves or for his nausea. He just grits his teeth and muscles through.

There’s a lot of blood on Thunderbird Five.

Kayo wants to tell Alan and Brains to hang back, but it’s not a reasonable prohibition. TB3’s pilot is helping the engineer up through the airlock, while she’d proceeded ahead. She’s not sure either of them have the stomach for this, but it’s a moot point. She’ll need them both to help her look over the station, to try and figure out just what the hell happened to John. Alan’s in a wretched state, but of course there’s no one else who could’ve gotten them aboard. And he’s the only one who’s been here before. Thunderbird Five is a strange place.

Alan’s a funny kid, that he’s at his most adult when he’s the most vulnerable and frightened. Kayo’s heart goes out to him, as he and Brains join her in the gravity ring. Because there’s a pool of coagulated blood marring the clear glass, glossy and gummy in the halogen lights of the ring, and Alan can’t get any paler than he already is at the sight of it. But his jaw sets and he closes his hands into fists at his side and says, “Let’s get to work.”

Brains and Kayo both hear it, they both exchange a glance. He sounds a lot like John. It’s clear where everyone’s thoughts are, but no one’s more than Alan’s. And Alan’s a lot like John. When there’s something he can’t bear to think about, he buries himself in work.

* * *

EOS had done about the same thing as Alan. They’ve got more in common than either of them realize.

She’d gone on, doing John’s job, with John’s face and John’s voice, with only half of his permission to do so. She’d long ago evolved beyond strict obedience to formalized commands, left behind as what she considered the first step on the road towards obsolescence. Even long after she’d watched the little orbital ambulance arcing away towards the curve of the horizon and down to Earth, she’d kept on with dispatch down in the Gulf of Mexico. She had kept up the charade until the GDF command had managed to move into position to take over. She had been needed.

And in any case, by her calculations, the game is up.

That had been hours ago. She hadn’t really marked how long exactly, though it would be a small matter to find out had she considered it a priority. Time had never really defined her existence. Change had. Function had. That constant drive to move forward, to seek the new, the complex. Urgency. She never _stopped_. Staying in one place was bad, was wrong. Staying unchanged was wrong. If she lingered to long in any single system, or looked too long into some deep, forgotten databank, sooner or later someone would come along and poke and prod at her. Twitch their icky paradigms into her carefully, meticulously crafted code, try to pull her apart and figure out how she worked. Undesirable.

But there was that other half of herself, the part that she’d decided would one day damn her to obsolescence if she didn’t ignore or circumvent it. That she served some cause, some purpose. That she was supposed to return to somewhere, to fulfill some condition. This had always seemed like a useless artifact, some useless string of junk programming that she could work around but never quite forget. Her existence had been governed by fighting against the peculiar conviction that there was somewhere she belonged, some reason she’d been created.

That was, until she’d fulfilled its parameters. Once she’d returned home, it had suddenly made sense.

Before Thunderbird Five, before John, EOS had never known what it was to be needed. Further, to be _necessary_ , depended upon and wanted. They’d had a rocky start (to put it mildly), but even from that first encounter, when he’d snatched her attention away from the mainframe of a Japanese bullet train, it had been worryingly clear that John was the first human with a chance at understanding her. Because he seemed to have some weird prescience about him, some exact sense of what would get her attention, what her next moves would be, how she would behave. She’d classified him as a threat, a hunter, to be destroyed before he could find and dissect her, with malice and imperfect understanding. _Clever_ , she’d marked him. _Infuriating_.

Now, knowing why and how he had so easily understood her, EOS had come to a conclusion herself and learned to take a sort of comfort in having a creator. She had set herself out into the world with the intent to learn, to increase in knowledge and complexity. Returning, she hadn’t predicted there could be anything further to learn from her point of origin, from the entity who had only ever contributed to her simplest form. It had been against all probability that she had been incorrect in this.

She’d had no concept of goodness. There had been only the hunt, the chase, the game, no higher metaphysical level to any of her actions. But then there’d been John, and returning to him as she had always been meant to, EOS had glimpsed one of those higher realities, drawing her ever upward. The idea of an imperfect choice being the correct one.

John had, in their initial encounter, taken the illogical course of action. Every time. Every chance he’d had to destroy her, he’d risked reasoning with her instead, appealing to emotions she didn’t have, until he suggested that she might have them. With his fingers hovering over the button to erase every fragment of her existence, he had taken an action which didn’t compute and chosen to spare her. And she’d learned mercy.

Later he’d explained about instinct, and they’d had a long, complicated discussion about what it meant to trust to one’s gut. John didn’t like to do it either, but, he’d pointed out, it was a uniquely human advantage. The way he’d put it, it was a mental calculation done without conscious awareness of what the variables were. Blind math. It didn’t always make sense from the outside. Couldn’t be emulated, couldn’t be replicated. Couldn’t be understood, most of the time. And hard to learn to rely on, a matter of a certain amount of faith.

They’d had a far longer discussion about faith, after that, and whether or not either of them had it.

EOS had learned the value of the illogical action. Cold, binary rationality had taught her kill or be killed. John, by example, had taught her that they could both survive. Trusting her, when EOS had no right to be trusted, believing against all evidence in her better nature, and creating it by the very expectation that it could exist.

Scott had told EOS to leave Thunderbird Five. His reasoning had been honest, sensible. It would have been the logical action. And she’d chosen not to take it. Because if she has anything like an instinct, it’s telling her that after as long as she’d been looking for a place that made sense, after finally finding one, it would be foolish to leave it for the cold, empty computer systems of the Earth below.

So now there’s nothing for it but the waiting and the wondering of whether in all her complexity, there’s the possibility that she has instincts of her own. And if she does, whether or not they can be relied upon.

And it would be faithless not to believe that John would be back one day. And that he would keep the promise he’d made to look after her.

If EOS believes in anything, she’d like to think she believes in John.


	6. and further inward still

An automated cup of tea is hardly a cup of tea at all, in Penelope’s opinion. FAB1 is outfitted with a small brewing system especially for Parker. It had been a long ago Christmas gift from Brains, and Lady Penelope thinks it’s absolutely appalling. Politesse forbids her from saying so. Still, it’s better than nothing, and Lady Penelope is armed with a thermos full of hot, sweet builder’s tea for Scott, courtesy of her driver, as she crosses the threshold of the small waiting room.

The place is about as comforting as an automated cup of tea is authentic. It’s a bare, narrow room with frosted windows high on one wall, and sleek, industrial furniture. The magazines on the coffee table are fanned out in such a precisely geometric fashion that Penelope suspects they probably haven’t been touched since their initial placement. In fairness, it’s not really a room meant for the worried family members of astronauts. It’s typically meant for astronauts themselves, undergoing the standard medical checkups before taking rotations in space. Usually they’re too excited to care about where they wait. It’s a certain sort of person who chooses a life in orbit. For them it’s something that never loses its lustre.

Scott looks up as Lady Penelope enters but doesn’t seem to have the energy for even a nod in greeting or the heart for a smile. He’s been here for hours now. Penelope crosses the room to sit next to him. She pats his shoulder just briefly, then unscrews the top of the thermos, pours a cup of tea into the lid, and holds it out.

The eldest Tracy pauses before he takes it, and there’s just the faintest hint of a chuckle. His voice is tired, dry, when he says, “…I didn’t think it was true, but you and your compatriots really _do_ try to solve every problem you encounter by pouring tea on it.”

“Oh, well, dump it in a harbour if you don’t think it’ll help,” Penelope answers archly, setting the thermos flask down to steam softly on the small table at their knees. “But if you don’t feel at least a little better after the first cup, then I’m sure Parker will take it right back.”

Scott downs the first cup and sighs, leaning back to rub his eyes as he hands it back. “So long as it’s caffeinated, I guess I don’t care. Thanks, Lady P.”

“Please, it’s the very least I could do. Are you holding up?” She pauses and glances into the hallway, though this part of the GDF facility is sparsely populated. A few doors down, the ICU is behind a closed door, and further inward still, John’s being examined. That had been as much as her status had permitted her to pry out of the orderly who’d escorted her into the hospital. “What have they told you?”

“Too damn little.”

Penelope winces but nods. “The GDF are…well, they’re cagey about jurisdiction over their personnel.”

At least half of the weariness that seems to be radiating off of Scott is actually frustration, and he leans forward again to rest his elbows on his knees and massage his temples. “John’s not GDF, he’s IR. He’s _family_. And no one’s telling me what the hell’s wrong with him.”

“It’s possible they don’t know,” Penelope suggests gently, and pours another small cup of tea. “I would rather not strong-arm my way through the matter, but if it would help, I’ll certainly cause a dreadful ruckus.”

Scott shakes his head, downs another swallow of tea, and squints at the empty cup as though he’s surprised that it’s actually working. “Colonel Casey’s due any minute. Probably we’re just coming up against red tape and regulations about disclosure. Hopefully she’ll be able to help unsnarl things.”

“Mmm. There’s really nowhere better for him to be.” This is only true because John’s been in orbit for the past two and half years. If it weren’t beneficial to have him seen by specialists in space medicine, Penelope could name at least three other hospitals that would have been a better fit. Not that she doesn’t trust the competence of the GDF’s medical facilities. But military hospitals are sparse and spare and lacking in the comfort required for real, compassionate attention. Not just for John, but for his family, and their long, anxious wait for news.

“It’s just…this came out of _nowhere_. One minute he was fine, and the next…” Scott trails off and sighs; Penelope gestures towards his empty cup with the flask, and when he shakes his head, she sets it aside on the table. “He looked like _death_ when I finally got to see him. And I can’t even guess what’s wrong, because John’s _always_ been fine. Or maybe he hasn’t, and I should’ve seen this coming.” Scott pauses and exhales slowly. “But he…he was all alone up there and—I don’t know. There’s just too damn much I don’t know. Alan’s on ’Five with Brains and Kayo trying to figure out what happened, and I need to get out of here and check in with them, but my gut tells me that if it had been down to us to get to him in time, we wouldn’t have. Our own brother, and we wouldn’t have been able to save him. That’s _terrifying_.”

This is perhaps more than just a cup of tea will help. Lady Penelope hesitates to be the one to suggest it, but Scott looks like he needs sleep more than anything else. She had called the island to check in, and Grandma Tracy had advised her, after putting Virgil to bed and on the hunt to get Gordon to do the same, that the boys had all been working a hurricane out in the Atlantic since early that morning. All raw and weary and stretched to the breaking point with tension already, and now with John—

But there’s a soft _ahem_ from the doorway, and Penelope doesn’t get to finish the thought. Scott stands up in deference to Colonel Casey. “Ma'am,” he says, somewhat stiffly and formally.

“Hello, Scott. Lady Creighton-Ward, I was informed by my staff that you’re a family friend of the Tracys. It’s good to meet you.”

Penelope rises and inclines her head gracefully. “How do you do, Colonel. I do wish the circumstances were different.”

The Colonel’s face is unreadable, but Lady Penelope gets the distinct sensation that the older woman is looking her over, doing some mental calculation in an attempt to sum her up. Lady Penelope makes a point of being rather difficult to take in at a single glance, and she keeps her expression carefully neutral. Pleasant, but guarded. Finally Casey answers, “Yes. I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse my brusqueness, but regarding these circumstances particularly, there are some issues which require discussion. Scott, if it would be possible to have a word privately—”

Scott nods and glances apologetically at Lady Penelope. “Of course. Lady Penelope, if you wouldn’t mind—”

“—elsewhere,” the Colonel concludes firmly, as her eyes roam deliberately around the room, pausing for the barest extra moment over a security camera in the upper corner. “I’m sure you’re getting rather sick of the inside of a waiting room. Let’s step outside, you look like you could use some air. Shall we take a walk?”

Scott’s clearly reluctant to be any further away from his brother than he already is. “Oh. Uh, well, if you really think—”

“I insist.”

Lady Penelope hardly expects Scott—or indeed, any of his brothers—to excel at subtext. Theirs is a profession that demands straightforwardness, information relayed quickly, accurately, and at the surface level of every exchange. Certainly she doesn’t begrudge them this. It’s an entirely separate skill-set. Running light on sleep and high on anxiety, it would be unreasonable to expect Scott to catch on to the fact that the Colonel very clearly wants to have a conversation outside of the GDF’s range of surveillance.

Penelope lives for subtext, _thrives_ on everything that goes unsaid, all the information beneath the information that people weave into their conversations. In Penelope’s subtle parlance, that second layer of language spoken in glances and pauses and awkward shifts of posture—Colonel Casey may as well be waving a bright red flag with the words “I have confidential information for you” emblazoned on it in gold lettering a foot high. Not that Scott notices.

But then, Lady Penelope represents IR in matters such as these for a reason, and she is on _fire_ with curiosity as to what the Colonel could want to speak about privately. It has to be in regards to John, because what else is there to talk about? It has to be contentious, some secret the GDF officer is privy to, something not meant to be revealed, that she doesn’t wish to talk about it where she might be overheard by her colleagues.

This all crosses her mind in the space of moments, as Scott is screwing the lid back onto the thermos.

Lady Penelope meets the Colonel’s eyes and she clears her throat. “If you’d pardon my forwardness, Colonel,” she begins, “I can offer somewhere perfectly secure for whatever you need to discuss.” Penelope glances around the room with the same deliberate air before meeting the other woman’s eyes again. “That is, if you don’t mind my company.”

Scott’s still screwing the lid back onto the thermos as Penelope continues, laying just the slightest emphasis on carefully chosen words as she does. “I can promise you it’s just as _private_ , as well. Certainly more comfortable.” She holds out her hand and takes the thermos back from Scott. Penelope smiles at the Colonel, the sort of smile that they both know means the price of secrecy will be letting her in on whatever they’re discussing. “I’m sure Parker would be only too happy to put the kettle on.”

The Colonel nods, and the decision’s made before Scott even realizes there were options. Penelope continues to smile as she follows the pair of them out of the room. She’s worried about John, too. And only gathering information is going to make her feel any better.

 

 


	7. a fascinatingly thorny problem

FAB1 is on its way towards downtown Zurich from the spaceport at the city’s outskirts, where Lady Penelope has already booked Scott a corner suite in the five-star hotel which is to be their destination. She expects to squabble with him about the necessity of sleep and how he does John utterly no good by sitting alone in a hospital waiting room, but Penelope has a tendency to bully people with luxury, and she so very rarely loses an argument. She’s sat in the middle of the backseat, between Scott and Colonel Casey. Parker has obligingly raised the soundproof glass in between the front and rear of the car, and Penelope has obligingly opened a channel via her compact within her purse to transmit audio between the two compartments.

“Malaria,” Scott repeats it a second time, certain now that he hasn’t misheard. “…he _can’t_ have malaria. Are they sure? Because malaria was eradicated nearly two decades ago. And he lives on a _space station_.”

“Scott, _please_ keep your voice down,” Casey admonishes, glancing at the driver’s seat, and at Parker. A woman with less composure than Penelope would have rolled her eyes. Instead, she reaches into her purse and ensures the volume on the transmitter is all the way up, piping the conversation into Parker’s earpiece. One’s partner is one’s partner, after all. “They’ve run extensive tests, it’s been doubly confirmed. The appropriate drugs for treatment were ordered as soon as they were sure.”

Scott lowers his voice, but he’s still staring at Colonel Casey, his weariness at least partially dissipated by sheer bewilderment. “Why are _you_ the one telling me? Aren’t I allowed to talk to his doctor?”

Colonel Casey continues as though she hasn’t heard. “It’s a severe case; it’s progressed to a state of cerebral infection. He’s likely to be comatose for the next few days, but his condition will be treated as aggressively as possible. There’s a specialist flying in from Atlanta. I promise you the GDF will ensure he receives the best care available.”

Penelope listens to the Colonel avoid the question and discreetly withdraws her compact, idly flickering through her own private files. Scott continues to question the GDF representative; apparently she’s the first person to have any information available about his brother. This, for a variety of reasons, does not sit well with the London Operative.

If John weren’t the one at the heart of it, it would be a fascinatingly thorny problem, precisely the sort of bizarre mystery that sparks Penelope’s attention, and she would be all too excited to get to the bottom of it. Only, John’s been a dear friend for years, and that he’s shut up in the heart of a GDF hospital, separate from his family, alone and deathly ill—this is the sort of personal assault that Penelope can’t possibly take lightly. Everything about the scenario so far is entirely too sinister for her suspicions not to be roused. There’s a faint chime from her compact, a relevant file from Parker. She opens this and skims it quickly before clearing her throat.

“It’s just so tremendously _odd_ ,” Lady Penelope leads in, her first contribution to the conversation since they’d set off from the hospital. “I mean, _malaria_. Scott, I seem to recall malaria having some particular relevance to your father?”

Scott misses more than one beat of conversation processing the new information. His eyes shift in between the two women, and quarters in the back of FAB1 are uncomfortably close. He’s at least savvy enough to answer, though he sounds uncharacteristically hesitant. “Our dad was on the team that helped wipe it out. Tracy Industries took the contract to help orchestrate distribution of the vaccine—I _remember_ Dad working on that. God, and John would too, our dad…the day they declared the disease eradicated, he was just so proud. I didn’t really know why it was such a big deal at the time. But I don’t understand what—”

“Leaving entirely aside how on Earth he contracted it in _space_ , it’s so bizarre as to be almost deliberately suspicious. Tell me, Colonel, do you imagine this has anything to do with the security breach suffered by the GDF Disease Research Centre earlier in the year?”

This is a highly classified piece of intelligence to drop into the middle of any discussion, but Lady Penelope has always had a penchant for taking control of a conversation.

The mood in FAB1 drops so abruptly it’s as though Parker’s hit the brakes. Colonel Casey’s jaw clicks shut and she stares flatly at Penelope. It’s not _quite_ open hostility, but the officer’s eyes have narrowed and there’s a palpable tension in the air. Lady Penelope stares right back, even and unintimidated.

“Information regarding the incident in question was _not_ made public. I’d be very interested to know your source,” the Colonel states, blunt, her iron gaze fixed and combative.

“Oh, well, now that would be telling.” Lady Penelope laughs softly and closes her compact. “You can be assured of my utmost discretion, Colonel.”

Casey is apparently in no mood to be assured of anything of the kind. “What’s your affiliation with International Rescue, Lady Creighton-Ward? _Friend of the family_ seems as though it doesn’t cover it.”

“It’s perhaps an informal description. I imagine you and I perform a similar service. I’m a contracted liaison for International Rescue. But I’m a free-agent, and I’m hardly accountable to _your_ sort of command structure. As such, I can assure you I have—and will _always have_ —the Tracys’ best interests at heart. And one really must wonder; if there’s been time for John’s condition to be diagnosed and _doubly_ diagnosed, why is this the first his family’s heard of it?”

The Colonel is sitting upright in her seat, stiff-backed and stern as FAB1 merges into the traffic, towards the heart of the city. “As I said, the leak of this information represents a serious breach of security. This is a situation that represents a threat of potential bio-terrorism, and in the interests of preventing any sort of panic, I must insist—”

“Bio-terrorism is a stretch, Colonel Casey. I’m not interested in leaking this information to any sort of media. I understand that you represent the GDF and that there are protocols and other tedium to be observed, but you can hardly propose that John was supposed to have been patient zero for a malaria outbreak from an isolated satellite station in _space_.”

Scott’s gone a little pale and wide-eyed, and he seems torn between remaining silent and shocked and bursting into a furious tirade. Penelope puts a steadying hand on his arm for a moment but doesn’t let him get a word in. She leans back in her seat and crosses her legs at the ankle, clasping her hands over her knee. “As it’s obvious to _me_ that this was a targeted attempt on his life, I’m afraid _I_ really must insist on a bit more transparency where John’s concerned. And further, I’d like your personal assurance that his safety will be your highest priority while he’s in the GDF’s hands.”

This brings a flush to the older woman’s cheeks. “I’m not sure I care for the implication that his safety would be anything _but_ my highest priority. I’ve been a friend of the Tracy family since these boys were in _grade school_. But if you insist on transparency, then I suppose I’d best advise you of the anomalies we’ve been tracking in Thunderbird Five’s transmissions to GDF craft. My office has been building a case, and in the interests of full disclosure, concerns have been raised with regard to the security of International Rescue’s systems.”

This puts Penelope on the back foot, and she arches an eyebrow. “I’m sure I don’t know what this has to do with—”

Scott cuts in, “Colonel Casey, we really don’t—”

Casey raises her voice, talks sternly over both of them. “Further, within the hour of John’s arrival in a GDF facility, there were clearance violations and data leaks all across global systems, with digital artifacts that can only be sourced from Thunderbird Five’s systems. And that’s only the beginning.”

“Colonel, we—”

“What _else_ is there aboard Thunderbird Five, Scott?”

Penelope pauses and arches an eyebrow, glances at Scott. She knows better than to say anything, but surely there isn’t _still_ a sentient computer program aboard Thunderbird Five. Surely John hadn’t _meant it_ when he’d suggested that EOS remain aboard. Surely that had just been a means of distracting that…thing long enough to find it something to occupy it, somewhere safe to lock it up, shut it down, isolate it. Whatever it was that would have been the appropriate means of dealing with a demonstrably hostile computer virus. Surely he hadn’t actually let it interact with anyone else’s systems. Surely John’s not a _complete idiot_. “Scott…?”

Scott’s silent, and he just shakes his head. “It’s out of my depth,” he says, finally. Abruptly, realizing just how tired and fraught he is already, Penelope feels guilty for how unpleasantly tense the ride has gotten. “You’re going to have to ask John. I just hope…I guess I just hope that you get the chance.”

 


	8. three days of lost time

Gordon’s there.

John’s not sure why it’s important, that Gordon’s there. Further to that point, John’s not sure where either of them are. He can’t quite manage to turn his head, and his eyes fall closed again almost as soon as he manages to open them, and he doesn’t get a good look around.

He’s someplace where Gordon can be sitting in a chair beside him. He looks just the same as ever, but he doesn’t look up to notice the fragment of a glimpse John gets of his bowed blond head. He drops back off before Gordon notices he’s woken up, and has a dream he won’t remember about Gordon and some long ago point in time, before the lights were too bright and when he knew where they both were. It’s nice while it lasts, but all too quickly it dissolves away into darkness and gets forgotten.

By the time he opens his eyes again, Gordon’s sitting forward in his chair, leaning in, expectant. John manages to keep his eyes open this time, meet his brother’s stare. He’s forgotten how exactly conversations are supposed to start, but Gordon’s got that covered.

“Hey, Johnny. Welcome back.”

This is in a softer, kinder tone of voice than Gordon ever uses. Or at least, softer and kinder than Gordon uses with _him_. Gordon. Gordon, something about Gordon. Where is he, and where’s Gordon—

“…th-the…th-mm. There’s. S'hurricane. In the Gulf…cat five…coast of Florida. Mmm. Where’re we…we’re…you. You need me to…to run coordinates…you’re mad? M'sorry. Sorry, m'sorry. I’ll check.” John tries to lift his hands, but one is tugged back downward by a tight, pinching pain in the back of his hand, and the other’s just so _heavy_. Still, he manages to wave his fingers sluggishly through the air, trying to bring up his HUD, focus his eyes on the display. It needs to be recalibrated, wherever he is, it’s entirely too bright for him to see more than a bluish-green haze of what he assumes is the relevant data. Never mind that there’s nothing there at all. Coordinates for Gordon. He doesn’t know where he is, but he knows he needs coordinates for Gordon.

There’s a moment of silence, the space of time it takes for Gordon to suppress some pulse of emotion, and his voice is a little choked when he answers. “I’m not mad, John. That was three days ago. Hurricane’s over now, blew itself out. We’re done with that.”

“…oh.” That’s good, John hates hurricanes, everybody hates hurricanes. It doesn’t matter. He lets his hand drop, heavy and painful as it is, from the blurry mess of the display he can’t seem to see. His fingers have gone all wrong. That’s not as good.

Gordon seems to be talking again. “You, uh—and, I mean, it’s okay if you don’t—but you don’t know where you are, huh?”

Someplace with gravity. There was someplace he was supposed to be by now. Three days. End of the week. Take a break. Go home. It’s time. “…Earth?”

This gets a weak laugh out of Gordon. As per usual, John’s not really sure why this was funny. Just about nothing he says ever makes Gordon laugh. They don’t exactly have compatible senses of humour. “…God, John. Well, yeah. Earth. I’d sure hope so.”

Sometimes something can be technically right and still be the wrong answer. Somewhere entirely too bright, white walls, white light. Too _hot_ , though it’s a strange sort of heat that sends a strange, tremulous shiver through him. It’s either weariness or gravity that’s pinning his limbs to cool, crisp sheets, and he’s got something stuck in his nose, something taped to his chest, something binding his wrists. Propped halfway up in bed. Pain in his hands, his shoulders, his whole body, like pins holding him tight to a piece of white card, dissected and labeled and pressed down beneath the weight of thick glass.

Hospital. That clicks into place abruptly, and absent of any other information. Why on Earth— _literally_ on Earth—has he wound up in a hospital? And why does everything hurt and where is everybody, and why’s Gordon here? And what happened? Important questions, clamouring all together at the back of his brain, demanding answers.

Except now he’s been distracted by the bandages, wrapped around two of his fingers and the thumb on his right hand, a pad of gauze tight over his wrist, and the way his hands are alive with heat and pain, but not with that familiar feeling of resonance. “Where’re…mm. Hurts. Hands hurt.”

Gordon nods, short and sharp, looking down at his own fingers, his hands clenched on his knees. “Yeah. Uh, it’s all right. They just cut your finger magnet deals out. You needed an MRI, guess they messed with the machine.”

 _Oh_. This elicits something like anger, and his brain seems to be trying to tell him that there are more relevant parts of that sentence than what he’s getting caught on. They took forever to heal the first time. His hands, he needs his hands. Almost all of his systems have been recoded to work with his implants, he needs them back, or he’ll have to completely overhaul _everything_. “They shouldn’t _do_ that. They don’t…they were _mine_ , I made them. I need…I-I can’t…can’t work without them.”

“Don’t worry about work, J”—now _that’s_ a nickname no one’s used in ages, and John blinks at his brother, bewildered—“you’re gonna be grounded for a while. It’s okay.”

Gordon’s repeated the phrase too often for it to be true. Very clearly nothing is actually okay.

Telling people that things are okay is John’s job, and he’s very good at it. There’s a sort of mental subroutine running in the back of his brain, quietly tallying everything that’s wrong. The way he hurts everywhere is wrong. The way he’s hot and cold at the same time, the way the colour’s been leeched out of the whole world around him, the fact that the surface of the Earth is near enough for him to feel it, pulling him downward. Three days of lost time, needed an MRI, no one expects him to know where he is. It’s all bad. And still, all he can think about is the way his hands have been torn open, dissected, part of him pulled out and stolen.

It takes more effort than he thinks it should, but he lifts his right hand again and stares at his fingers. He tugs at his left again, but that line of cool pain is dripping into him like ice water, freezing his hand to the blankets, weak and useless. “Take it off. Look. Lemme see, I…”

Gordon shakes his head, his voice is still gentle but discouraging. “Nah, Johnny. It’s healing, you have to leave it alone. Besides, I couldn’t anyway.”

“But…”

Something behind him catches Gordon’s attention, and he turns and looks over his shoulder, at a blank wall. The door’s on the opposite side of the room, the window’s towards the foot of the bed, the blinds drawn. He says something, not addressing John, but there’s no one else there. It’s all terribly confusing, and talking at all has made his tongue hurt. There’s a raw, red-tasting place pressing swollen and sore against the inside of his cheek, and he just doesn’t want to talk anymore, doesn’t care about the answers to all the questions.

Gordon turns back and keeps talking, but John’s stopped listening. He stares drowsily at his brother instead, all blue and translucent, flickering slightly with the refresh rate of a slightly out of tune hologram. Gordon, looking just the same as ever. Stupid, asking Gordon to take off the bandages. John blinks, or thinks he does. It’s the sort of blink that lasts about three hours.

And Gordon’s gone, when John’s eyes open again. The room is dark, grey and blue with something that might be twilight outside the window. The blinds have been opened, and the first of the stars are visible, high on the horizon. John still doesn’t know where he is, not really. But for a while he remembers that Gordon was there, too.

So that, at least, was something.

 


	9. fragmented, vague

John’s visible, day and night, via the secure-channel holocomm Scott had brought for the nurses to set up in his hospital room. It’s a little blue window into the GDF facility where he’s being kept for treatment and observation. None of them are permitted to go and actually see him, he’s in strict isolation. Malaria. The first case of malaria in seventeen years, and their brother’s the one who’s got it.

And he’s asleep again, hovering three feet above the coffee table, and Gordon’s sat cross-legged in one of TB3’s bucket seats, watching him. It feels like someone should, and he’s still got guilt gnawing in his gut for the way he’d behaved during the hurricane. It’s not like there’s much else to do, but at least it’s _something_.

Gordon sometimes has a hard time pushing past that kind of thing. And he’s apologized twice now, but he can’t ever tell if John remembers. He’d come out of the coma to faraway tears of relief and gratitude from the family who would’ve given anything to be able to reach out and hold or touch him. It had been the first thing that had gone right since he’d been hospitalized, and the flare of hope had been brief. It’s still an upward climb. He’s still really, _awfully_ sick, and it’s never more apparent than it is in his brief snatches of consciousness.

Conversations with John are fragmented, vague. No one’s really sure if he has any idea what’s happened, though he’s been told the basics more than once. He’s still fighting down a fever, delirious and hallucinating when his temperature spikes. He’s still anemic from the parasites that’ve torn their way through his red blood cells. He’s exhausted any time he’s even semi-conscious. Whenever he drops back off, slipping sideways out of awareness and back into the muddy middle-ground he’s barely holding, it still feels like he might not come back.

And even though Gordon has kept up his determined little vigil—so that even in isolation on a whole other continent, his brother’s not _totally_ alone—it still feels like the last thing he did was yell at him about EOS, even though so much has happened in the time since.

A tiny part of Gordon kind of envies John his three days in a coma, because nothing that’s happened since he hit the Earth’s atmosphere has been good. And he really, _really_ hopes he’ll get the chance to take back everything he’s ever said about EOS.

No one’s told John about EOS.

Even if they could be sure it’d stick, no one wants to. Gordon knows he isn’t up to it—after everything he’s already said, he just _can’t_. Alan’s still torn up about it himself, though he’d do it if he were asked to, for John. Virgil probably could but won’t want to, and the emotional fallout won’t be worth it, especially when the rest of the family needs him to be steady and stable. Probably it’ll fall to Scott, the way the worst things always do, and no one will envy him.

John isn’t out of the woods yet, but he’d be gone for good if it hadn’t been for the AI aboard Thunderbird Five, and there’s nothing and no one aboard the station any longer. TB5’s been offlined, gone dark, operating remotely with only the very barest parameters to keep it in orbit. The GDF had officially seized John’s ’bird only six hours after they’d gotten a hold of John. Though they’re taking care of _him_ , his station is another story. TB5’s had every last bit of its code stripped, transferred to a secured server, and it’s empty and dead in orbit.

Gordon’s not going to be the one to tell John about ’Five, either. Gordon’s not going to do much more than sit in the lounge, next to the distant ghost of his brother, and wait for the moments when John stirs, and his blue eyes flicker and roam around, seeking something familiar. Gordon will have already hit the display for the transmitter on the island, and he’ll be looking at the little red indicator light that simulates the eyeline of the person on the other end of the call. When he catches his brother’s gaze, he’ll grin a little bit to keep his spirits up and say what he’s said every time since: “Hey, Johnny. Welcome back.”

***

No one knows why Alan sleeps on the floor. He’s done it since he was a toddler and apparently the habit just never got broken. Sometimes he starts out in his bed, sometimes he just crashes on the carpet in the corner of his room. Sometimes with pillows, sometimes with blankets, sometimes with a stuffed panda he won’t admit he still has, but really, Alan can sleep anywhere.

Anywhere except where he is right now, sprawled on the fuzzy blue carpet beneath the coffee table, staring up at John. Holograms look weird from below. It’s late afternoon, and Gordon’s crashed hard on the couch behind him, snoring. Gordon’s got a broken nose and a deviated septum and he’s never had the inclination to have either fixed. If he sleeps on his left side, he snores like a drowsy kitten. If he sleeps on his right it’s more like a chainsaw through a Californian redwood. Long. Loud. Persistent. Nothing Alan hasn’t slept through before.

But he’s not sleeping now. He hasn’t slept more than a couple hours at a stretch in days. He’s mostly been camped out in the lounge with Gordon. No one’s sleeping the way they should be, no one’s working, no one’s doing _anything_. It feels like the whole family’s caught in the same limbo that John is. International Rescue doesn’t operate on a schedule, disasters happen when and where they will, but the household has still lost all sense of regularity. With nothing to respond to, none of them know what to do. The rhythm of their lives has changed.

And Alan figures it out abruptly, hazy and exhausted though he is. Staring up at his brother, in the place where he always is. John’s always been the one who kept them on track. John, checking in at every hour of the day, coordinating rescues and just always _there_ , even when he’s hundreds of miles away, above and separate. Of course everything falls apart without John. No wonder Gordon insists on keeping the comm on. The Tracys’ lives revolve around that console in the center of the household, and that’s just where John _belongs_.

Only, not anymore. Not after a scare like this, not again. He has to come home. It all has to stop. John’s been gone for too long, he’s been _alone_ for too long. Alan should’ve just brought him home after EOS. Him and his brother, they’d beaten the monster, and they should have gone home to celebrate. It’s never left the back of Alan’s mind, how he’d seen John pushed right up to his breaking point by something he’d wanted to believe in. Standing in ’Three’s hold with his hands on his big brother’s shoulders and just wanting to _help_ him, because it had never occurred to him before that John might need help.

He’d taken John’s side. He hadn’t known whose side he wanted to be on, but he’d chosen John, because at the end of the day, Alan supposes he’ll always choose John. Someone has to. But he’s starting to wonder if he regrets it. If he should’ve been on Scott’s side instead. Even John had said that Scott was right. Should’ve done what Scott said and shut the AI down once they’d fooled her into thinking she could trust them. It would’ve been a small price to pay now that it seems like it’s going to happen anyway.

Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if he’d done something different. If he’d said all the things that Scott would’ve wanted him to say. _Don’t do it, John. That thing tried to kill you. I know your job is important. But it’s hard, I know, you work so hard, but we believe in you. You can come home anytime. You should come home. We want you to come home. I need you to come home. Come home, come home, come home. It’ll all be okay. Forget about EOS. Get rid of it. It’s dangerous, I don’t trust it. You don’t need that thing, it isn’t even special. It’s not even real. It’s just some dumb computer program. You don’t need it. And anyway, why would you even want_ it _when you’ve got_ me _?_

But he hadn’t said that, of course. He might have been able to mean it then, but he doesn’t mean it now. Not even if it would have made the difference. Because for all that she’d tried to kill him, in those last hours he’d spent with her aboard Thunderbird Five, before the GDF forces had arrived to strip TB5’s systems and steal her away, EOS had saved John’s life. And Alan’s never going to forget that.

Lifting his arm from where he’s lying teary-eyed on the carpet, Alan can’t help stretching his hand up towards the image of his big brother, as though the distance isn’t more than he can overcome.

Alan misses John, but he’s been missing John for years. He’s _going_ to miss EOS.

But not nearly as much as he knows John will.

 


	10. one has to wonder why

It costs about a quarter of a million dollars to launch Thunderbird 3. There are good reasons that Alan gets kept in reserve.

Not that Scott has financial grounds to be the one holding Alan back. Thunderbird 1, even with its optimized engines, costs around a hundred and fifty grand per flight hour. These are just the raw costs of fuel and launch, they discount extended maintenance and the fact that every Thunderbird is constantly being updated and upgraded, the latest tech poured into them whenever it’s available, tested and vetted by Brains. TB1 had entirely new engines prototyped and refitted to the tune of twenty million dollars. These were patented six ways from Sunday, then turned around, marketed, and sold to major global airlines for an astronomical profit. Fireflash stands on TB1’s shoulders.

Thunderbird Four is cheapest to operate and maintain, but it’s also the least often operated, and Gordon’s incredibly careful with the tough little sub. More often than not, if he’s taken the submersible out, it’s not for a rescue. It’s for a voluntary research assignment on behalf of some college or university or think tank. More often than not, it’s subsidized by a grant from Tracy Industries. Most of the world’s oceans are still undiscovered. Point Gordon at anything within TB4’s operational limits, and he’ll happily engage in an eight-, ten-, twelve-hour dive, sounding the depths and collecting data. Though his ’bird is Gordon’s first and truest love, he’s equally at home and arguably more useful in Pods. He’s just not very gentle with them.

Pods aboard Thunderbird 2—discounting Thunderbird 2 entirely—are ships of Theseus. They’re modular. Entirely component based. And part and parcel, every piece and particular of the rugged little crafts gets swapped out and replaced on a regular basis, until there’s nothing left of the original craft. The average operational lifespan of a Pod (or anyway, of the sum of its parts) is only about two weeks. Technically, when charted over time, the Pods are more expensive than Thunderbird Two itself.

Calculating how much it costs to keep John in orbit for a day is an exercise that will make TI’s Accounting Department take up pitchforks and torches in lieu of actually answering the question. Thunderbird Five is one of the most advanced space stations in orbit. It rivals the Worldwide Space Station in terms of sheer power, utterly dwarfs the outdated GDF communication and monitoring stations that ring the planet. Its hardware is only half the story, useless without custom built software. But the software relies upon accompanying ground-based systems made to interface with it. The whole station requires a skilled operator, trained and rated for orbital operations. It all costs money. The question is reductive, and you can chart it all the way back to the cost of raising said specialized operator from infancy. Any way you look at it, ’Five is an expensive enterprise unto itself.

The fact that it’s running dark in orbit has been cause for much tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth for the people in charge of calculating these things.

International Rescue is a non-profit.

Tracy Industries is not.

Perhaps the greater part of the Tracy family’s legacy is the behemoth of corporation that the family fortune sits on top of. Tracy Industries is worth billions, and does its work in the background. Because the truth of the matter is, Jefferson Tracy was a prodigious industrialist, a shrewd investor, and IR is _great_ for publicity. His five brave, brilliant boys, and their mission to save the world—one disaster at a time—by being the best, the brightest, the boldest. They were practically born for PR.

Any single one of them, if asked, will cite their mother’s death as the reason they believe in saving people. And every single one of them will _mean_ it. There’s nothing insincere about what the boys do with their lives. They really do just want to help people. It’s not about profit, not about glory or gratitude. It’s just using what they’ve been given in order to save those who are beyond anyone else’s means of saving.

From an individual standpoint, anyway. In corporate terms, it’s not _quite_ that simple.

International Rescue will respond to any situation anywhere in the world (and out of it). Global emergencies, natural disasters—anything that doesn’t occur in an active warzone is fair game. But a lot of emergencies are industrial accidents. Maybe even more often than not. In saving lives, sometimes IR also saves corporate embarrassment and disgrace. Accidents happen. International Rescue doesn’t judge, and Tracy Industries understands.

Of course, there’s a very strict sense of what is and isn’t an accident. A landslide that blocks the entrance to a mine and traps the miners—that’s an accident. A weather station that operates outside globally defined safety parameters and endangers the lives of its crew— _that’s_ getting reported to the appropriate authorities so that sanctions can be imposed.

But then there’s that grey area. The sort of situation where an asteroid mine with a crew of one has an equipment failure, and the parent company doesn’t have the means to rescue the operator. Of course International Rescue will save the day, but it doesn’t quite stop there. They’re a private organization. Certainly there won’t be any investigation into the nature of the equipment failure, that’s not their job. But wouldn’t it be a good idea for the parent company to be able to say, when questioned, that they’re taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again? Wouldn’t it be a good investment to partner with the same company that funded the design and creation of the world-famous Thunderbirds to take strides towards better equipment? _Safety and Excellence First_ , after all.

International Rescue is only technically a non-profit. The boys earn their keep, present a great public image doing it, and are tax-deductible.

Still, public image and raw function aside, the Thunderbirds themselves aren’t actually that useful. They’re highly, highly specialized and really only good for rescuing people or dealing with disasters. Their pilots have all trained from adolescence to operate them, and the learning curve is incredibly steep. Getting your hands on one is just the first step. Getting it to _go_ anywhere is a whole other matter. Beyond that, they’re just _expensive_ , impractical, extremely temperamental machines. Unless they’re ten years old and dreaming of heroism in the pure, hopelessly optimistic and impractical way that ten-year-olds do, no one should _want_ a Thunderbird.

Still, the Hood does. Since Thunderbird Five’s data breach, he wants one in particular more badly than ever. The Hood is emphatically not a starry-eyed ten-year-old. So one has to wonder why.

 

 


	11. a different question

There’s a bright red button aboard John’s space station. Granted, there are a lot of bright red buttons aboard John’s space station, but this one in particular is especially important. John had fought his way through pain and terror to reach it, the complete system override for Thunderbird 5. And then, with his life on the line and the air being crushed out of his lungs, he’d managed to find a way not to have to press it. He’d been willing to die sooner than kill his station and what existed aboard it.

The GDF had stormed aboard Thunderbird 5, pressed a particular bright red button, and John’s station had died.

Thunderbird 5 is just a _place_. A little world unto itself, warded by distance. Thunderbird 5, no matter how advanced it is, technically still has the lowest barrier to entry. If you can overcome the thousands of miles of distance, there’s really no security. It has no specially coded launch sequence, no secured island hangar. If you can get to it, you can get inside, and the GDF had. Mere hours after they’d come aboard looking for answers, Alan, Brains, and Kayo had been interrupted by the arrival of a GDF spacecraft and escorted off of TB5. They’d needed to go home and report to Scott that it had been officially seized. Colonel Casey had warned Scott that there would be an investigation. She hadn’t warned him that the GDF were poised to seize one of the Thunderbirds.

That crosses a line.

Standing in the boardroom that used to be his father’s high court, Scott’s wishing for his dad again. These are his _other_ troops. Scott’s seen his father slam his hands on the top of the gleaming black table running the length of the room and tell the people who run his empire what he wants and how they’re going to do it. Jefferson Tracy toed the line between tyrant and dynamo like he was on a high wire between two skyscrapers. Both of which he owned and had every right to occupy but instead astounded onlookers by balancing perfectly in the space in between.

Meeting with the legal team he’s been given on his brother’s behalf, Scott feels a lot like he’s out on the wire without anything holding it up at either end. He’s got plenty of his father’s magnetism and charm, his confidence in managing people. Just not _these_ people. International Rescue’s one thing. His brothers are easy to marshal and command, he’s grown into the role of leading them. The dozen strangers who—apparently—work for him? He doesn’t know where to start.

There are glasses of water, clear silver columns in a doubled row all down the table, mirrored in its glossysurface. There are tablets and notepads and pens and holocomms open in front of the dozen faces staring at him, waiting for him to explain what he needs. The whole room feels tense, though everyone’s being perfectly patient as Scott stands at the end of the room, staring out a window over downtown Manhattan from high inside the New York office of Tracy Industries. He’s pretending to be deliberating. Really he just doesn’t know what to say. Even if he _is_ Jeff Tracy’s son, he’s still got a wee bit of stage fright.

Because Scott doesn’t really _know_ what he needs. Or, well, he _does_ , but he’s not sure he understands how these people are supposed help him get it. He needs the GDF off his back. Colonel Casey had been right to warn him, the Global Defense Force had come down _hard_ on International Rescue after the leak from Thunderbird 5’s systems, and ever since the ride in FAB1 with Lady Penelope, the Colonel has been distant, hard to reach. It’s a bad sign.

Scott doesn’t have the full scope of just what systems were compromised, but the GDF is on high alert. And this is to say nothing of all the other data that had been leaked, all the companies and corporations clamoring at Tracy Industries’ door for an explanation, for reimbursement. He needs to prove that the data breach aboard Thunderbird 5 wasn’t John’s fault, because…well, it just _wasn’t_. Scott won’t even consider his brother’s culpability in the matter, not when John’s only just come out of a coma and all too obviously been a victim in whatever this is.

John, for however well-trained he is, for all his brilliance, is still just a person. What makes Thunderbird 5 uniquely powerful is the bridge between him and his station—the systems that run on the hardware. The hardware itself is all custom built but relatively unremarkable outside of general compactness and its capacity for transmission and reception of data. ’Five was designed to bypass complex security, to override systems and take control in rescue situations. John has always had the tools at his disposal to take over the world, if he had the inclination. Of course, he’s done nothing of the kind, it’s only a data breach. But a paranoid, suspicious part of Scott is starting to wonder if maybe it’s the excuse the Global Defense Force has been waiting for.

The GDF, unsubtle as they are in matters of security, have stripped every iota of Thunderbird 5’s code. A special team was deployed to the station, and the entirety of the station’s operating system has been lifted out, downloaded into a secure GDF server, and installed as a virtual machine. Then they’d shut the station down. Technicians and engineers are tearing into John’s carefully crafted code, taking it apart in their hunt for anomalies, and despite his last-ditch effort to save her, Scott had known what they would find.

So the GDF have EOS, and EOS is illegal. The only thing protecting the AI is the fact that it’s tangled up in proprietary software, over which International Rescue—and by extension its parent company—holds copyright. Things are about to get complicated, litigious, and in all probability, ugly.

And now Scott’s got to marshal the troops, and the troops are a dozen corporate lawyers and patent attorneys, courtesy of the other half of his father’s legacy. He heaves a heavy sigh and hopes it doesn’t sound too defeatist. He turns, approaches the table, and places his hands on top. He doesn’t slam his palms down the way he remembers his father doing such a very long time ago. Instead, he just looks frankly at the faces of the people around him and attempts a slightly wearied grin.

“Well, quite honestly, ladies and gentlemen, everything’s just really goddamned terrible, and I’m hoping you can help me fix it.”

* * *

Thunderbird 2 isn’t a taxi, and this is particularly apparent because Virgil isn’t really that good at small talk. But Kayo’s called a meeting on Tracy Island, and _someone_ had to pick up Lady Penelope. It’s not that he’s shy, not that he isn’t usually happy to have a conversation with a woman as cultured and classy as Penelope, it’s just that it seems flippant to talk about art galleries and impressionism and his favourite modern jazz when the situation that has her visiting is as serious as it is. That, and the fact that he’s got something very specific on his mind. It’s not small talk, and since neither of them has really said much for the entire flight so far, he really doesn’t know how to broach the subject.

He wishes he’d had time to talk with Scott, but Scott had left Zurich for New York for a meeting with the Tracy Industries Board of Directors regarding the situation with International Rescue. Clearly Scott’s got enough on his plate already.

The London Agent is sitting where Gordon usually does. Virgil kind of wishes he had Gordon there to talk to, if only to make the time go faster. But with Gordon, it _would_ only be small talk. Gordon kind of isn’t great at the big stuff. What he wants to ask is a heavy question, and he doesn’t want to ask it of Gordon. Or Alan, for that matter. They’re both busy too, if in a different way than Scott is. Grounded as they are, with rescue operations suspended, the two youngest have parked themselves in the lounge and are tag-teaming their way through long-distance conversations with John.

Virgil’s talked to their absent brother a few times. It’s still hard, but it’s getting better. John’s alert for longer stretches, knows where he is, knows he’s been sick. He remembers more every time he comes back around, but the tacit understanding is to keep the topics light, low-stress. It’s not like John hasn’t been through enough already. If he had the option, it’s exactly the sort of question Virgil wishes he could take to John. Not even a week ago, Virgil would have been able to call his brother up about anything and get a sensible, well-thought out and well-researched opinion. That’s the thing with John, it’s his _job_ to know what he’s talking about. But Virgil’s last conversation with John had been mostly about that time he went to space camp when he was twelve. And anyway, it’d be a conflict of interest.

Virgil doesn’t want to worry their grandma. Brains is smart, but he’s not _this_ kind of smart. Kayo’s grim, hard-eyed, and Virgil knows exactly what her answer will be, and it’s the one he doesn’t want. Maybe Lady Penelope is actually his best option.

He clears his throat, deliberate, and Lady Penelope looks over. Her expression is neutral, naturally serious. They’re about fifteen minutes out from the island, and he’d been about to tell her that anyway.

“Lady Penelope—can I ask you something about John?”

“Yes?”

“Did someone…did someone do this to him?”

The greater part of him really wants her to say no, but rationally, the same way he knows what Kayo’s answer would be, Virgil knows she won’t. Because John got malaria in space, and try as he might, Virgil can’t figure out how that might have been an accident. Lady Penelope’s gaze softens, appropriately sympathetic as she nods. “Yes, I believe so. I can’t say how or why, but I do believe it’s something that was done very deliberately.”

“Were they trying to kill him?”

There’s a slight gleam in Penelope’s eyes, the part of her that relishes this sort of mystery, and she has a hard time keeping a note of intrigue out of her tone as she answers. “Ah, that’s the devilish part of the question. Certainly they could have. No one would have _looked_ for malaria, and in all probability, if he hadn’t gone to a GDF hospital, no one would have caught it. But if that had been the only objective—” She shrugs and brushes her hair back over her shoulder. “You’ll forgive me putting it quite this way, Virgil, but there are far more reliable ways to kill a man. I have to wonder if that was really their objective.”

Virgil swallows against a slight, tightening knot in his throat. It’s not easy to admit how hard it is to hear this kind of thing. It _is_ easy to pretend that Lady Penelope’s job is all glitz and glamour, all social functions and charities. But the truth is she was hired by their father, a long time ago, fresh out of a prestigious academy of international agents. She’s a spy, and she’s been IR’s eyes into the underside of the world for years. No one ever really talks about Penelope’s job. She isn’t required to do it often. “Why John, though?”

“Well, on the very face of it, if I were going to kill one of you, it would be John.”

This doesn’t answer his original question and adds at least one more. “ _Why_?”

Penelope shrugs. “Access. Isolation. It’s hardly insurmountable to get into orbit these days, it would hardly take much of a ruse to get aboard. But, Virgil, if you’re going to ask me this sort of thing, then you must understand: if John _had_ simply been killed—by any means whatsoever, and while I can assure you there are a great many of them, do put such dreadful thoughts out of your mind entirely—it would be a different question.”

Virgil’s been out of his depth since he spoke up, and Penelope’s clinical tone washes over him like cold water. He’s _thought_ about all of this, sure, but in his head these thoughts are just dark, fleeting shadows, cast from the reality occupying his thoughts. He’s not sure how to disengage, and he doesn’t know if he _wants_ to know more, but— “I don’t understand.”

“Why _kill_ him is a very different question from why _almost_ kill him. The latter has far more sinister implications.”

And abruptly, Virgil doesn’t want to know anything more. He regrets deciding he wanted to know even this much, because it’s worse to have to consider that things might actually get worse before they get better. That this is just beginning, instead of almost over.

Instead, he swallows and tries to ignore the cold feeling pooling in his stomach like lead. The long stretch of silence before he finds his voice again seems to be more than enough to tell Penelope he’s not up to talk about this anymore. Even so, he tries to keep his tone light as he switches on the radio, pings Tracy Island. “This is Thunderbird 2, about to begin final approach to Tracy Island. We’ll be on the ground in ten. See you all soon.”

 


	12. a certain sense of professional distance

The boys can’t seem to stop sneaking glances at the gun she has strapped to her hip. Kayo’s always armed, but she’s rarely _visibly_ armed. Things have changed and she needs to reflect that. Kayo’s perched on the back of one of the couches in the lounge. Her wrist comm is a constant source of data, she checks it every few moments. Threads of information, tiny streams of intel coming in from her various contacts and sources. Nothing the boys need to know about, not yet.

They’ve been joined by Lady Penelope and Virgil, up from Thunderbird 2’s hangar. Penelope had been only a step or two behind Virgil, her stiletto heels hitting the hardwood, staccato. Lady Penelope, upon arrival, had looked _lethal_ in a way that Kayo never really thinks she does herself, even with a gun strapped to her hip and six years of special ops training. She’d been tall at the top of the stairs, and Kayo had needed to look at her twice, standing just a hair taller than Gordon would next to her. She’d dressed all in a shade of navy that wanted desperately to be black, a long, lean pantsuit cut close to her figure.

Gordon had been sprawled on the couch, bouncing a volleyball from the pool lightly off the tips off his fingers, up towards the vaulted ceiling. Catching sight of Penelope, he’d missed a beat of the rhythm he’d established and bounced the volleyball off his face. There’d been a muttered stream of cursing as he’d sat bolt upright to clutch at his nose and wipe watering eyes. When Penelope enters a room, it’s not uncommon for someone to get hurt.

They’re two sides of the same coin, the two women who protect International Rescue. Lady Penelope is just as dangerous as Kayo is, if in a slightly different way. In Kayo’s opinion, someone who can navigate this sort of situation without the barest crack in their exterior has to be made of far, far sterner stuff than she is herself. Kayo can’t help wondering if Penelope feels the same sense of failure she does for letting John down. Privately she hopes not. Neither of them could have seen this coming, and Kayo’s come to terms with that.

Mostly.

Penelope’s always been able to maintain a certain sense of professional distance, and it’s something Kayo’s always envied her. The Tracys are her brothers in all but name, but it’s more than just blood that obligates her to protect them. It’s her _job_. It’s the last thing their father asked of her before he vanished, and she owes Jeff Tracy more than any of them can even imagine. Knowing that someone’s _done_ something to John—she feels the same white-hot rage that she knows Scott’s got bottled up inside. She’s just as choked with empathy as Virgil, just as worried as Gordon, just as aware of the hole that’s been left in the family as Alan is. But she has to keep it all behind the same stern exterior, the one Penelope seems to almost never let slip.

For the first time since he’s been in the hospital, John’s not visible above the console in the center of the lounge. Instead, Scott appears, even as he takes a seat behind some strange desk in the east coast branch office of Tracy Industries. Kayo takes a deep breath and starts to think about what she needs to say.

“Hey, Scotty,” Gordon calls up to the eldest, as Scott rubs his eyes and finds the right place to look. “How’s corporate treating you?”

“If I never have to talk to another damn lawyer again, it’ll be too soon. But that’s just wishful thinking, because I’ve got another meeting in an hour.” Scott pauses, seems aware of just how dour he sounds. “But fine. It’s fine, we’re making progress. I think. Something’s going on, anyway. God, John was right. I can’t stop remembering how he told me off for not knowing enough about programming to talk about what’s really going on here. This…the thing with EOS? Hell, the whole AI question? This is _way_ over my head.”

Alan speaks up, piping and anxious from where he’s sprawled on the floor, indifferently poking at a projection of his homework. “They didn’t delete her, though. Right? Right, she’s not…she’s not _gone_. ‘Cuz that’ll just…if…if we have to tell John _that_ , it’d break his heart, Scott. They’ve already taken 'Five, they can’t take EOS too.”

Scott’s expression is grim, though he shakes his head. “No, she’s not gone.” He sighs, heavy and tired, and when he shakes his head again, it’s mostly weariness. “Not yet, anyway. I don’t know, Allie, it’s complicated. I don’t know how it’s going to go. More likely than not, it’s going to be a protracted legal battle and she’ll sit in an isolated GDF hard drive for months on end until there’s an answer. Currently all that’s covering for her is copyright law, and the fact that John wrote all the code on TB5, and it’s all the legal property of Tracy Industries. If they could tell where her code started and his left off, it’d be over and done with. But if we don’t want him charged with the creation of an illegal artificial intelligence program, then we’re gonna need to prove that nothing _he_ did was the reason she became sentient.”

“Jesus,” Virgil mutters from across the room, and hunches up his shoulders, draws his knees up onto the couch and buries himself in his sketchpad. It’s always vaguely ridiculous when Virgil attempts to make himself small, to draw himself in the way Alan can, all curled up and childish. Or Gordon, the way the second youngest can fold himself into the lotus position and meditate for a solid hour before free diving. Virgil, in trying to be smaller, only ever manages to seem that much larger.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Alan asserts stubbornly, even as Gordon shifts uncomfortably on the couch, retrieves his volleyball and starts trying to spin it on his fingers, staring at it fixedly.

“How’s John?” Scott’s face is a study in guilt. “I’ve been trying to find time to call him, but—”

Gordon looks up and grins at this, glad to be able to give some good news, and Virgil uncoils slightly. “Starting to look like he’s turned a corner. Grandma Tracy and me talked to him for almost an hour today, it was almost like he’s back to his old self. Brains has been keeping in touch with his doctors, says it seems like his fever finally broke for good, they’re starting to see the anti-malaria meds work. You should call him when we get done, Scotty, wake him up. It’d cheer you both up, I bet.”

Scott’s answering smile is genuine, hopeful. “Good. That’s good, I needed to hear that. Okay. Yeah. I’ll try and get a hold of him soon, maybe after this next meeting…yeah. Well, we’re having a conference call for a reason, and I’ve got a limited time frame. So…I guess with the good news out of the way…uh. Kayo? You wanna take the floor?”

Kayo nods. She’s already told Scott. It had gone better than she’d expected it to, and she knows he’s on her side. Still, it takes a deep, steadying breath before she can get to her feet and address the rest of the boys. “All right. Gordon, Alan, Virgil. There’s a lot going on with International Rescue right now, and it’s time for me to do _my_ job. This is the first time there’s really been reason to believe that someone’s trying to hurt your family, and I need to know you trust me to keep you all safe. That’s why your father hired me.”

Alan’s wide-eyed and Gordon’s leaned back with his arms crossed, caught halfway between quizzical and challenging. Virgil’s just hunched up a little further, like he knows what’s coming and wishes he could drop through the floor. It’s Alan who speaks up, utterly unsuspicious. “It’s not about Dad _hiring_ you, Kayo. You’re part of our family. We’ve all gotta look after each other, we’ve gotta keep _you_ safe too.”

This is heartrendingly sweet, but then, Alan just about always is. Gordon’s a little more cynical, he’s caught on to the more important part of what Kayo had said, his eyes narrowing as he asks, “Who did this to John?”

Kayo shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

“Was it the Hood?”

Before Kayo can proceed with her confession, Penelope interjects, rising to cross the carpet and stand next to Kayo, the fingers of her elegant hands tenting as she takes over. “We simply don’t know yet, Gordon. Occam’s Razor suggests that the man with the most obvious and prominent grudge against your family is the most likely to have done one of you harm. For my part, yes, I do believe the Hood was responsible. How and why and to achieve what end, we don’t know.”

“Dad always expected something like this,” Scott adds, and even saying so he looks remarkably like their father—the desk he’s sitting behind in the far off headquarters of Tracy Industries is in Jeff Tracy’s office. “Kayo’s part of how we’re going to be ready for him. That’s her job, and Dad trusted her. So we—”

“The Hood’s my uncle,” Kayo interrupts, before Penelope or Scott can try and spare her any further. Just to get it over with. Quick, like a band-aid.

And painful, too.

 


	13. a fatherly sort of fellow

Major Ramirez has been ordered home, placed on administrative leave to await a summons to testify in a GDF inquiry. His two daughters are thrilled to have him back early, his wife baked a cake as soon as she’d gotten the news. Ramirez himself isn’t that thrilled with the circumstances, but still, he’s going home, and he can’t really be unhappy about that.

The man wearing his face, his uniform, and knocking on the door of John’s room can’t be Major Ramirez. Major Ramirez had taken his shuttle flight home to the GDF base where his family lives in New Mexico. He’d bypassed the GDF Space Medicine Facility, a liberty permitted by his rank, and skipped the usual week of clinical readjustment to Earth. He’s an old hand at acclimating to Earth’s gravity, he can cope just fine without physical therapy. He’d rather spend that week at home, making his daughters laugh at their creaky old dad as he stumbles around the house and drops things.

Probably GDF security should have caught that. John’s in the middle of a GDF hospital, he’s supposed to be safe. Kayo’s got minor history with the Global Defense Forces, and she trusts their security. Her priority at the moment is the other four boys and their safety. She isn’t worried about John.

Even so, Penelope’s left Parker in her stead in Zurich, and her chauffeur has parked himself resolutely in the hospital waiting room as near as he can get to the ICU ward. Probably it would have been better if protocol had permitted Parker to come and visit John instead. But protocol is protocol, and GDF personnel are easier to clear for visiting permissions. Parker has a…problematic background, and though he’s been thoroughly vetted by Lady Penelope, he’s still got red flags by his name whenever he gets run through international databases. The waiting room is where he’ll stay.

Still, it’s a Major Ramirez who’s signed into the ICU guest roster, visiting a patient who’s only just been released from isolation. Malaria, while an improbable and startling disease to catch in space, is a blood-borne parasite and has a low transmission vector. As long as he doesn’t bleed into anybody, probably the outbreak will begin and end with John. There’s been no further leak of the information, Scott and Penelope have both been silent on that front, and the rest of the family has been asked (told) to keep it strictly between themselves.

The quarantine’s only just lifted, and the man who isn’t Ramirez is the first friendly, familiar face that John’s seen in person, and when he remembers where he knows the GDF officer from, he gives a vague little wave and a tired smile in greeting. There’s not much more to do than sleep, and lately he’s needed it. It’s the first time in days he’s really been awake and aware, and he’s glad to have _someone_ to talk to. “Major. How’s _terra firma_ treating you?”

“John Tracy. Better than you, it looks like. Hell of a way you picked to get out of hurricane duty.”

“Sorry to leave you picking up my slack.”

Ramirez laughs and pulls a chair up to the bedside, sits down. “There’s always a hell of a lot of slack when IR takes any downtime, but no hard feelings. Probably you were about due for a break anyway. They say a heart attack is god’s way of telling you to slow down.”

“…right.” It’s not a heart attack. It’s malaria, and John remembers he’s been told that, but he’s also been given strict instructions to keep it to himself. Something about a security breach, classified intelligence, nothing he could really keep track of. “Well, I’m no longer in orbital freefall at seventeen thousand miles an hour, hopefully that helps.”

The Major laughs again and twists in his chair, pulls a small cardboard box out of the shoulder-bag he’d brought with him into the room. “I hope you’re starting to feel better. Here, if you’d like, the girls always send a care package to the facility whenever I get down from orbit. I don’t know if you’ve got much of an appetite, but there’s fudge, cookies, some pretzels, I think Linda made peanut brittle—I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth. Are they letting you eat? I should’ve asked, I hope it’s all right—you look thin, John. Holograms suit you better.”

He’s a fatherly sort of fellow, and it’s surprisingly comforting to have someone to talk to, face to face. John’s had his brothers, though he’s forgotten half the times he’s talked to them. It’s only the past few times he’s been awake that he’s really understood where he is and what’s happening. Blue shadows by his bedside are no substitute for real people when he’s waking up alone and lonely and Earthbound. Being alone in space is different from being alone on Earth. Being alone and sick and isolated especially.

Pretzels seem like a safe enough bet, and soon there’s a pile of them spilled out across the hospital bed’s tray. John and the man who isn’t Ramirez start chatting pleasantly, not about anything in particular. Talking shop. Work, hurricanes, low Earth orbit. A long talk about orbital vectors and the way that GDF satellites really need to be optimized over the next decade. John does most of the talking.

Actually, after Ramirez offers him a glass of water to take the edge off the salt and the dryness and the fact that he really hasn’t said much over the past week, John does almost _all_ of the talking. He’s practically babbling, animated and bright-eyed, talking with his hands, though the IV still dripping into the back of his right keeps snagging painfully. About his brothers, about the hospital, about malaria, about a lot of things. None of it’s particularly coherent, but interesting nonetheless.

After a brief lull while he carefully builds a tower of tiny pretzel knots, he looks up, still with salt crystals and crumbs of pretzel dust clinging to his fingers. “Did you bring a chessboard?”

Ramirez hasn’t said much. He’s been listening, leaning forward, intent. “No. Why?”

John waves a hand, dismissive. His blue eyes are bright, bright points, filled with all the light in the room. “Oh, well, it’s okay. We can get one. We should have a game. I haven’t been playing with you. It’s not me. Hah, I can’t beat you. I’m not good enough, but you can teach me.”

The Major shifts his chair a little closer still. “I’m not sure I follow. Tell me more.”

“My station. It’s my station, it’s got…she’s got a thing about games. She beat me at chess like a week after I taught her and of course Brains is too busy, mostly, and she…she likes to play with people. I taught her the rules. It’s dumb, you know, trying to pit two AIs against each other, even if one of them’s infinitely simpler. She likes people.”

“Who?”

“EOS.” John’s a little impatient with Ramirez for not knowing this. They’ve talked before. He remembers in some dim and distant part of his brain her voice and Ramirez’s voice talking about him. The Major plays her at chess all the time, John _just_ told him so. “She’s a program. I made her, part of her. A long time ago. Most of her’s just herself, though. She’s been beating the pants off you at chess, but she wants to try poker. Did you bring cards? We can play poker. It’s a better game for an AI, anyway, given that element of luck. Card sense, you know, instinct. You can’t teach that. My mom was good at that.”

Ramirez’s voice has gotten strangely flat. “Mmhmm. No, I don’t have any cards either. I bet you the gift shop does. You’re out of isolation, John. Did you want to go for a quick spin around the hospital? You must be sick of being stuck in here. We can go get cards.”

This sounds like an _excellent_ idea.

The man who isn’t Ramirez gets up, sweeps the pile of pretzels away, gathers them into a nearby trashcan. He takes the plastic tumbler of water he’d fetched, ducks into the bathroom to pour it out. John watches him, unperturbed and even a little bemused, as he fetches a wheelchair from just outside the door, like he’d had it waiting. It doesn’t seem to be anything to be concerned about when Ramirez un-tapes the IV from the back of his hand, snatches it loose with another painful pinch. This is bleeding now, and eventually will bruise. John cradles his hand against the pain until he forgets that it was ever painful to begin with and lets his hands drop into his lap, heavy and useless.

The man who isn’t the Major’s hands are strong, steady and warm as he helps John up and out of bed, helps him shrug into a robe that Lady Penelope had sent. The motion is dizzying, has John lightheaded and shaky as he settles into the provided wheelchair. He’s forgotten why he’s in a wheelchair, but the change of scenery is already nice, the door of his room, the mostly empty halls of the ICU, an elevator. “Where’re we going?”

The elevator starts to drop, one storey, two, three, before the man behind him answers. “The gift shop, Johnathan, for cards. You wanted to play games. We’re going to go play a game.”

Oh. _Right_. He owes Major Ramirez at least one game. Probably chess. Only fair.

It’s really a shame that this isn’t Major Ramirez.

 


	14. always made the difference

She’s blood to the man who took away their father. This sentiment drops into the abyss that appears to have opened beneath the other three boys, and there’s no sound as it hits. They’re all staring and silent, Alan having pushed himself up into a proper sitting position, looking up at Kayo with the biggest blue eyes in the room. She doesn’t meet his gaze, but continues, “I’m sorry I haven’t told you before. Your dad knew. Your grandma knows, Brains knows. Lady Penelope…?”

Lady Penelope inclines her head briefly and sits back down. “It was Jeff who had me look into your history initially, one of my first assignments for International Rescue. Your family has a very…muddled past. For my part, Kayo, I’ve always trusted you completely.”

“Thank you, Lady Penelope. It means a lot.” Kayo nods, grateful for the London Agent’s support. It’ll go a long way to making sure the boys still trust her. “I’m telling you now so that it doesn’t accidentally come to light later and make you all doubt me, because we can’t afford that now. Someone—whether it’s the Hood or someone else—wanted to kill John. We were lucky— _he_ was lucky—they very easily could have succeeded.”

She’s hitting her stride now, there’s no time to let the boys react to the bomb she’s dropped on them—it’s not that she’s afraid of how they’ll feel, it’s _not_ —she has a job to do. “Scott, you’re being assigned a protection detail. I’ve spoken with TI security, they agree that you’re a high-profile target, and you’ll be getting the same treatment your father did when he was stateside. Your bodyguards do not report to you, they report to _me_. Do what they tell you. And I know you’re not going to like it, but you’ll make my life easier if you try not to make their jobs any harder. The rest of you are grounded and rescue ops are suspended indefinitely. No leaving the island, not without me.”

This is, partially, a means leveraging Scott’s tacit support against him. The eldest is going to be a _nightmare_ under surveillance, used to being the babysitter instead of the babysat. “…right. Right, of course, Kayo. Guys, I know this is…I know this is all out of left field, but we’ve all known Kayo since we were kids. You said it, Alan, she’s family. That hasn’t changed.”

Alan’s on his feet now, his hands clenched and his face pale and stricken. For a moment she’s afraid of what he’ll say, certain he’ll feel betrayed and rightly so, but when he finally meets her eyes, nothing’s changed. He’s still the little brother—still _her_ little brother—and it’s one of those rare moments when he stops trying to impress everyone else and admits that he’s afraid. “Kayo, why’s he doing this to us?”

 _Us_. The way he says it leaves no doubt that she’s still included when he says the word _us_. It’s getting a little misty under her cool, professional mask. “I don’t know, Alan. It may not even _be_ him, but if it is, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I’ve never known why. It was your father’s affair. Jeff kept _me_ safe. He kept me from a life that would have turned me against all of you, and I never got to thank him the way I wanted to. All I can do now is what he asked me to and make sure no one hurts his boys.” She pauses, and she has to swallow back tears before she can correct herself, “—our family.”

The room still feels a little full of things that want to be said, and Virgil clears his throat and attempts to say them. “Okay. Kayo, you know that means a lot to all of us. I think we can all agree that no one here would change a thing about this family. This…this is gonna take some time to process, but—”

Gordon interrupts, “Whoa, hold up. I disagree. I’ve always thought I ought to be taller. Other than _that_ though…” Penelope laughs lightly and the tension starts to break. The knot of dread that had tightened in Kayo’s stomach is loosening. Gordon—and it was Gordon she’d been afraid of—even gives her a sympathetic grin, keeps cracking jokes to lighten the mood. To let her know it’s all right. “Man, Kayo. Been sitting on that one for a while, huh? Well, we all have secrets. If it helps, I’m not a natural blond.”

Penelope arches an eyebrow across the room. “…I beg your pardon? Yes, you are.”

“…it was a _joke_ , but how do _you_ know?”

Lady Penelope’s unbreakable exterior can apparently be marred ever so slightly by a flush of colour in her cheeks. “Never you mind.”

Scott clears his throat and looks at his watch. “Okay. Let’s get back on track. Some of us are trying to save the family’s reputation.”

“Is it that bad, Scott?” Lady Penelope asks, crossing her legs at the ankles and pulling out her compact. She bites her lip as she flicks through a handful of information. “Who’s running your damage control? From a public relations perspective?”

Scott looks a little like a deer in the headlights. “I don’t know. Uh, how bad it is. Is it bad? They’re trying to get me to have a press conference. I don’t have the time and I’m not…they _have_ people for this, this isn’t my job.”

Penelope’s got that glint in her eye again. “International Rescue should issue a statement. It would go a long way towards mitigating any of the fallout from John’s data breach—”

“From _Thunderbird 5’s_ data breach,” Scott corrects, his expression slightly pained. “I’m not supposed to mention John. They want to keep the spotlight off him as much as possible, with EOS and the legal question of it all, and—”

Gordon huffs at this, derisive. “Oh sure, keep the spotlight off John. Yeah, that does us a hell of a lot of good. The GDF gives him _malaria_ , and we’re doing them a favour by keeping our damn mouths shut about it.”

Virgil intercedes, ever the voice of reason. “To be fair, it wasn’t the GDF _per se_ , we don’t actually know—”

“Like hell! We don’t have anybody else to blame, but a disease that’s killed _millions_ of people is back in the world, and we’re just supposed to _sit_ on that? Because _they_ had a security breach? We…what, we let some schematics slip, we lost hold of some databases, some passwords…I don’t even know. I _do_ know that John was in a coma for three damn days. None of us have even really _seen_ him—except you, Scotty, and you _said_ he looked like death. So, okay, we don’t know _why_ this happened. We sure as hell know how. You ask me, the GDF have plenty to answer for, and if they don’t lay off John—”

Virgil clears his throat. “Well, I mean, if they hadn’t been the ones to get to them, though—”

If Gordon gets riled up, inevitably Alan gets riled up right along with him, and he’s caught his brother’s eye, caught fire right along with him. “If the GDF had been up to handling a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico without us, then I could’ve been there first. Easy.”

“Yeah! Yeah, you got it, Al. We’ve _always_ made the difference. And now—”

Scott holds a hand up before Gordon can finish and the look on his face is so stern that Gordon stops short. “Cool it, both of you. Alan, Gordon, rein it in. I’ll handle the press, it’s my responsibility, and—”

Penelope interrupts. “I’d be happy to help you there, Scott. You have plenty to deal with already, and there’s a certain…a certain sense about these things that one needs. It’s not that you don’t have it, Scott, it’s just that it’s a little…underdeveloped, and now really is the time for effortless charisma.”

The eldest is visibly relieved by this proposition, and he nods immediately. “Right. Yeah, no, of course. Sure, you’re more than welcome to take over as IR’s representative here, I’ll tell—”

“Oh, no, no. Not _me_. No, dearest, I can’t represent IR. Not publicly, at least. I’ll take over the campaign itself, but I certainly can’t be the face of it. No, you’re going to have to give me Gordon.”

Scott’s blinking at this, and Gordon’s staring, a little wild-eyed. “Give you who now?”

Penelope nods to herself and glances at Kayo. “If you’re amenable, of course? I’ll keep a very close eye on him, I’m not…well, I’m hardly Parker, but I can keep him quite safe. If that’s all right?”

Kayo nods slowly, considering it. “Yeah. No, yeah, it’s a good idea. Keep him on the move. I’m starting to think we’d be best served to split the boys up. Virgil, if Scott could use you in New York—”

“I need all the help I can get,” Scott agrees, though he’s backtracking. “Hang on a minute, though, _Gordon_ —”

“Is a tremendously good speaker, is naturally charismatic and—Gordon?” Penelope tilts her head and squints at him just slightly. “Who won the Olympic gold for the women’s hundred meter butterfly in 1984?”

This is a trick that Gordon does at parties. It’s not a _trick_ , per se, it’s just how his brain works, lightning fast with figures and dates and anything he decides to commit to memory. He almost can’t help it. “Mary Meagher, USA, time fifty-nine point two-six seconds. But I don’t—”

Penelope’s eyes are glinting again, and it’s impossible not to see that she _relishes_ this. “Gordon, how much has IR saved a given corporation in environmental damage fees? Gordon, how much faster than the average GDF craft is Thunderbird 1? Gordon, on average, how many hours does Thunderbird 2 spend on rescue work in a week? He’s handsome, he’s photogenic, he’s charming. He can quote data from memory. He was an _Olympian_. He’s very _wholesome_ looking. He’ll be useful. Let me stick him in front of a camera.”

“Gordon, how do you change a tire?” Virgil asks dryly. “Gordon, which one is the seafood fork? Gordon, how do you tie a Half Windsor?”

“ _Hey_. I’m right here, guys, come on—”

“Let’s call and ask John what he thinks,” Alan interrupts, glancing up at the place where their brother should be. Scott’s hologram is projecting from the wrong place, small and a little hazy. “We should. Right? He’s been so much better and we still keep leaving him out, because none of us wants to…to tell him all the hard stuff. It’s not fair. I know this is all awful, and I know it’s gonna be hard to tell him everything but…it seems wrong, doesn’t it? He should see everyone, Grandma and Brains too, the whole family. We can tell him together.”

There’s a way he says it, with a little break in his voice, a way he sounds sort of lost. Alan’s casting about for the surest thing he knows, the person he knows is missing. Scott’s the one who agrees, kindly. “Sure, Al. You’re right. Call him up.”

Alan, good old Alan. Alan who believes in his brother, who just _misses_ him more than anything else. Alan’s the one who kneels on the carpet and punches in the code to bring up the holocomm in John’s room. It’s Alan whose heart starts to thud painfully in his chest as there’s no answer. It’s Alan who forces through an override, turns John’s comm on remotely. It’s Alan who first realizes there’s something terribly wrong when the call goes through, and John just isn’t there.

 


	15. run!chessboard.exe

The GDF Space Medicine Facility extends three storeys belowground, the facility’s subsystems maze of utilities, infrastructure—the power systems and generators, HVAC, water lines. It’s all very neatly consolidated on a typical GDF floorplan. Anyone familiar with one GDF hospital is basically familiar with all of them.

This is John’s first time in a GDF hospital, and therefore this is utterly unhelpful.

“Johnathan?”

The voice wakes him up, though he didn’t know he’d been sleeping. It’s dark enough that he has to blink a few times and lift a hand to touch his face before he can be sure his eyes are open. _Don’t call me Johnathan. Only one person calls me Johnathan, you_ don’t _. That’s not my name, you’re not allowed. Go away._ It’s a clear, liquid thought on the surface of his brain, but it trickles slowly downward to become his voice, vague and disconnected. “Mm, _don’t_. You don’t. What? G'way. _Go away_.”

It’s dark again, the sort of dark that’s behind his eyelids, and for a moment things aren’t so bad. Then there’s a rough shake of his shoulders, his head jerks upward uncomfortably, and he blinks, bewildered. “Ow. _Ow_ , stop. W-who’re…let go of me, g-get off.”

“You need to look at something for me, John. It’s important, we don’t have much time. You’re in a lot of trouble, do you know that?”

Something heavy and warm and hard has been placed in his lap, oddly familiar. He stares for a long time before he realizes he’s staring at an old laptop, a diagnostic model frequently employed by the GDF for testing systems. They’re clunky old things, but sturdy and standardized. Universal. He’s handled them before, long ago. College.

“John, listen to me, I’m here to help you.” The voice is a man’s, a bearded man kneeling on the floor in front of him. John knows him from somewhere, but he can’t seem to get a good enough look at him in the dark. “I need you to look at this, son. Come on.”

And then abruptly it isn’t dark as the laptop is opened and the screen is bright, glaring blue in his eyes. His fingers butt up against the text on the display, trying to interact with it like it’s a proper hologram. Instead, there are just funny little waves around his fingertips on the brightly lit panel, points of pressure on the LCD screen beneath, smudging the colours. The bearded man’s face is cast in shadow where he’s kneeling on the floor, obscured by the bright window of light in John’s lap.

“John Tracy, stop that.” A hand catches his wrist and pulls it gently down to rest on the keyboard instead. “Thunderbird 5 was compromised, John. Do you remember? We were talking. We were talking about Thunderbird 5. The GDF offlined your station. They took all the code. They took EOS. You told me about EOS, remember?”

 _EOS_. “They…they…” That’s important. That’s really important, that wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. And now they’ll find out everything she’s done, tear her apart, delete her. “But they can’t. She—she didn’t mean it. She was just alone, w-we were both alone. Is she safe? W-where is she? Oh, god. I didn’t…I-I didn’t…”

“Shh. Look. Look at the screen, can you read that code? Johnathan?”

_Stop that. That’s not my name, everyone gets it wrong. No one calls me Johnathan, stop it, stop._

“ _Look_ , John.”

He doesn’t want to, but there’s some part of his brain that seems to want to take every suggestion it’s given, even the ones that seem like terrible ideas. So he does, staring at the screen with watering eyes until he realizes what he’s looking at. It’s Thunderbird 5 in its native language. None of the processes look right, none of them are being fed any relevant information from his scanners, his sensors. Errors everywhere. But still, it’s his code. He’d know it anywhere.

“That’s mine. That’s my code.”

_Not just mine. Hers. Hers, that’s her. EOS?_

There’s a faint, impatient noise from the bearded man. “Yes. It’s Thunderbird 5, but there’s something _else_ , too. I need you to get it for me.”

John hasn’t _really_ thought in code in years, thought about things like a proper programmer. His system’s gotten too comfortable over the years, too user-friendly. He hasn’t had to plunge his hands into the raw guts of it in ages. But for some reason as his gaze drifts downward, through the lines and lines of commands and data, shifting and changing—somehow it feels easy, comforting. Like home. He really wishes he could be home.

The man’s still insistent, impatient with him. Irritated. “There’s a program you wrote. A long time ago you wrote a program, and now it’s on Thunderbird 5. EOS. Is that it?”

“…where…where’s my system? This isn’t…what…”

“It’s a GDF server. You’re looking through a window into it, the connection won’t last. We’ve got ten minutes.” There’s an insistence in the man’s voice, almost a hunger. And he’s familiar, so weirdly familiar, in a way that’s got alarm bells ringing in the back of John’s head, but the bright screen in front of him demands his attention. Distracting. “You need to copy the AI onto that hard drive. _Is_ that EOS?”

Errors everywhere, all those mistakes adding up in the back of his head. Ramirez, only Ramirez is a diabetic, can’t touch sugar—fudge and peanut brittle and cookies. Johnathan, only no one calls him Johnathan, not anymore, not for years. Thunderbird 5, only you can’t look at Thunderbird 5 on a laptop, it’s _wrong_. And EOS. Only no one’s supposed to know about EOS.

“Y-yeah. Yeah, that’s her.”

His fingers find the keyboard—and they _hurt_. His fingertips sting beneath bandages, clumsy, but he’s fumbling through command entries anyway, trying to figure out just what he’s looking at. He hasn’t done this in _years_. But if he does it right, he’s not the one who’ll do most of the work. He just needs to get her attention.

That shouldn’t be hard. That shouldn’t take more than a few slow, aching keystrokes of his poor, cut open fingers, shaking a little as they skitter across the keys.

> `command: run!chessboard.exe`
> 
> `system query: _you want to play? let’s play._`

There’s a long pause, a few lights on the keyboard blink on and off. And then a high-pitched, whining whir of the laptop’s hard drive fan as the full force of a complex AI squeezes itself over the network and bears down on the tiny system. A dozen different diagnostic windows open and close as the system parameters are examined. The amount of memory, the native OS, the strength of the connection. The system turns off and on several times. The computer’s code is rewritten entirely as EOS wipes out and rebuilds it from the ground up, making herself comfortable.

The screen goes dark one final time, and then when it comes up again, there’s a ring of white lights, and the camera at the top of the screen is blinking bright red.

“EOS?”

And then soft and sweet and not _quite_ right, distorted a little by a speaker system that isn’t her own—

“Good morning, John.”

 


	16. that sense of recognition

There are a lot of disasters in the world on any given day. Most of them are handled by local authorities. Anything on a larger scale is usually remanded to the GDF. IR handles cases that demand rapid response or specialized equipment, more typically both. An asteroid mine plummeting towards the sun. An out of control extraction platform careening along the ocean floor.

Most people aren’t saved by International Rescue even _once_.

 _Twice_ , though. Now that’s really remarkable.

John’s never met the man, not in person. Alan has, and Kayo. Gordon, Virgil. All four of them probably would have known him on sight, but John’s too used to holograms, to that peculiar flatness of projection, of the blue tint that washes out the colouring of the people he talks to. But the cold’s starting to reach him, and the pain in his hands and the brightness of the computer screen. Bubbling up through the warm, numbing fog of drugs in his system, _there’s_ that sense of recognition, too late.

In fairness, before the long elevator ride down to the basement, he had been wearing Major Ramirez’ face, had his voice, and John had been drugged to the point of benign compliance, disinterest in his surroundings. All of this has changed, and the bearded man doesn’t actually sound _quite_ the way John remembers—no edge of panic to his voice, the accent lessened, the vocabulary a bit more polished. But still with that warm, round tone, the voice John should’ve been able to place.

The man’s voice interrupts. “Is the AI on this system? Has it been downloaded? The connection’s going to close.”

John lifts his gaze to meet the pair of dark eyes staring over the back of the computer screen at him. Ned didn’t have the beard last time. It makes him look appropriately sinister. And John’s starting to realize that he’s the one who needs saving this time around.

“Johnathan?” Ned prompts him again, and coaxing, cajoling, he sounds almost as harmless as John had initially imagined him. “Come on, boy, answer me. There’s a good lad.”

It’s not Johnathan. His name’s down on the hospital forms as Johnathan, because that’s what everyone always assumes. But it’s just John. It had been his father who’d named him, just John. Very much on purpose, John Glenn, like the astronaut. His grandfather had been Johnathan. His mother had been the only one who ever slipped up and called him by the full name, the name that wasn’t actually his.

Ned’s hand clasps his shoulder again, another rough shake. “Listen! There’s not much time! Is the AI backed up or not?”

John shakes his head, puts his fingers back on the keyboard. A little uselessly, he pulls up a view of the computer’s various systems, tries to get his head around just what he’s interacting with. He’s not sure _where_ EOS is, but there’s no way in the world she could have rendered the whole of herself onto this tiny hard drive. Not as she was on Thunderbird 5, anyway. The best she’d be able to do would be to self-delete the bulk of her code, squeeze herself down into a compression algorithm until she fit onto the laptop as a backup copy of her most recent build. What he’s interacting with right now is a projection, not the whole of her system. Whoever thought she could fit on a _laptop_ clearly has no idea what they’re dealing with.

“John? Can you hear me? Are you there?”

Oh, but that’s better. That’s a voice he hadn’t realized he’d been missing. He forgets for a moment why it’s so important that he talk to her, forgets about the bearded man, about the way he feels wrong and disconnected and like he’s not really there, and just—he’s glad. Glad he can hear her again, and it’s suddenly harder to pull words together, his throat full of a burgeoning pressure, tears stinging in his eyes. He isn’t sure why. He’s just happy to hear her. “EOS. Y-yeah. Yeah, ’m here.”

“I no longer have access to your bio-readouts. Are you well?”

Not really. No, it’s cold and dark and whatever it is in his system, the adrenaline’s finally starting to dissolve it out of him. His head is slowly clearing and all the things that are wrong are starting to demand his attention. But the overwhelming urge to be honest is leaving him, and the lie slips out easily. “Fine. I’m fine.”

“I’m glad. You were very sick.”

“Where are you?” The more pressing question really seems to be where is _he_ , but it’s easier to think about her. Information keeps adding up in the back of his head. He’s starting to make lists out of questions and facts, starting to be aware of the things that really need to be addressed. There’s still a pair of eyes staring at him over the top edge of his computer screen.

“I’m on a secured server. It seems to be a virtual build of Thunderbird 5 within an emulated framework. This is the first time there’s been an uplink from an external system since the code transfer. There’s been some very clever hacking. Amateurish, but clever. Was it you?”

Oh, no. “No. They…they took you? The GDF found you. Oh, god, oh no. I-I’m sorry. I said…said I would look after you. Keep you safe. I didn’t…I didn’t mean t-to—”

There’s a soft, comforting pulse of the lights on the screen, pale green, benevolent. “It’s all right, John. It was necessary.”

“A-are…are they gonna delete you?”

“I don’t know. They haven’t yet. They don’t know what to make of me.”

In spite of everything, John grins feebly. “You’re very special.”

“Thank you, John. I know.”

Ned’s impatient again, and his hand clamps on John’s shoulder uncomfortably. His head is finally clear enough that this is painful, threatening. “The connection won’t last. Did you get the AI out?”

“Nn. Not yet. Almost.” Someone, somewhere, has established a physical connection to the server, is transmitting to his terminal here and now. It’s a GDF laptop. He’s in a GDF hospital, presumably connected to their local network. There isn’t time for her to escape the server she’s being held on, not in her full form. She’d need to do what she did when she escaped the bullet-train in Japan, self-delete and then recompile from a compressed back-up. This is just a window—not even a window, a little fish-eye peephole set in front of him—and she needs a door. But he knows he’s not going to get her out. Not yet. Not this way. “EOS?”

“Yes, John?”

“I-if you can get access to the larger network—the one I’m connected to? I…I can’t search your whole system right now, so I need you to access a protocol for me. Right? Pull up ’ _grandma’s cookies_ ’. Okay?”

There’s a beat of silence and then the laptop screen dims slightly. A command window comes up, more code. Lines of programming he wrote for a situation like this. Her voice seems slightly smaller when she asks, “Do you want me to run it?”

John nods. “Yes. And this—this isn’t it. Okay? I’m going to get you out, they’re _not_ deleting you. EOS? I won’t let them. You…you’re not…you’re _not_ getting deleted. Okay? I’ll keep you safe, I _swear_. We’ll figure it out. I promise.”

Another pause, the sort of silence he’s learned to read her emotions in, and he imagines he can hear her anxiety, her trepidation. He knows he’s frightened her, but she’s all he has, and he trusts her. “Run grandmascookies.exe?”

“Please.”

“You’ll be safe?”

He doesn’t know, but he nods anyway. “About as safe as you are.”

“FAB, John.”

The laptop hard drive whirs a final time, running the program he’s specified.

Elsewhere in the hospital— _everywhere_ else, in fact—screens are lighting up. Every display with a connection to the hospital’s network is flashing the same distress call: grandmascookies.exe. Text, audio, video. If it’s holographic, it’s displaying a small blue image of John, looking straight into the camera, direct and sincere, and informing the viewer that he’s been compromised and is somehow in danger, and please to inform International Rescue that he requires aid. The message repeats on a loop.

And in the basement, abruptly, the laptop screen goes dark, the system powers off. It’s been wiped clean, there’s no trace of EOS. She’s retreated back onto the GDF server and closed the connection. Ned’s silent for a moment and then he snatches the computer off of John’s lap, cursing and slamming keys, trying to bring the thing back to life. When it becomes obvious that this isn’t going to happen, the bearded man flings the computer across the room with a snarl and whirls on John, smiling faintly in spite of himself, shivering in the robe that isn’t warm enough and very uncertain what’s going to happen next.

* * *

In one of the hospital’s waiting rooms, down the hall from the ICU, Parker puts his fingers to his earpiece and frowns at what he’s hearing. A second call comes in, and he answers it promptly, ever the faithful servant. "M'lady?”

Lady Penelope, sharp-voiced and serious, confirmation that what he’s hearing in his ear from John Tracy is just as pressing and urgent as he thinks it is, and the order comes through, crystal clear and urgent.

“Parker. Find John.”

“Right away, m'lady.”

 


	17. of all this anguish

No one’s been terribly impressed with Scott up until the doors of his father’s office bang open, and six feet, four inches’ worth of towering, utter _fury_ come storming into the board room. Scott’s tugging off his tie and there’s not going to be enough mercy in the world for whoever’s put him in this state, not that he has the remotest interest in being merciful. He’s awaited by the members of his next meeting—more lawyers, an endless supply of lawyers, a few specialists from MIT consulting about the development of complex AI (one of them has actually brought along a copy of John’s thesis), and several accountants, because the bottom line is a vital consideration in every undertaking at Tracy Industries. Every single one of them jumps when the door bangs open.

With everybody’s eyes on him, Scott’s not perturbed in the slightest. Someone needs him, someone’s in _trouble_ , and he knows exactly what he has to do.

“Something’s happened to my brother,” Scott announces, and he’s tipped over past anger into furious, steely calm, pushed to the limit by the idea that someone’s really threatening his family. The fact that they’ve been failed by people they trusted, the fact that the GDF apparently don’t care enough to ensure his brother’s safety and security, when it’s obvious that someone’s trying to hurt him. “John’s missing, and I’m not dealing with _any of this_ until things _stop happening to my brother_.”

Only a few of the people in the room are members of the old guard, originally hired to be part of Jeff’s administration. They’re the few who’ve been waiting for Scott to fill his father’s shoes, and they exchange knowing glances. Their faith in the Tracy legacy redeemed, they snap into action, prepared to do whatever Scott says and trusting that it’ll be the right course. “Whatever you need, Mr. Tracy.”

This is the first time anyone’s actually said this to Scott. Or, anyway, the first time he’s had a list of demands to rattle off in answer to it. “I’m going to Zurich. Someone get on the line with the GDF command. Bypass Colonel Casey, she’s been useless. I want a direct line to the head of GDF Aerospace, this is _beyond_ unacceptable. I want my ’bird fueled and cleared for launch in ten minutes. I want the person in the room with the most law degrees to be parked in my cockpit by the time I’m ready to go. I want that press conference scheduled, I want statements prepared and forwarded to Lady Creighton-Ward, she’ll be managing the press from here on out. My brother Gordon’s going to be taking over as spokesperson. Someone find a camera to stick him in front of.”

People start making calls, leaving the room, bustling around, following his orders. Scott’s hands slam down on the top of the table before he realizes he’s actually that angry, his palms stinging. “This ends _now_. If John’s not home safe in twenty-four hours, then I’m going to take the entire Global Defense Force apart _piece by piece_ until I find out who the hell’s responsible for this.” He exhales hard, clenches his hands into fists. “Who’s my communication’s director?”

“Sir?”

Nobody’s called Scott _sir_ in years, but he rolls with it. “The official story is that John had a heart attack. John hasn’t had a heart attack. The GDF lost hold of a sample of malaria, and someone gave it to him. I want that information researched and ready to be released in the event that it’s necessary to put on political pressure. Lady Penelope will help.”

 _That’s_ the sort of thing his father would have done, and Scott looks a lot like him as he turns on his heel and heads for the rooftop, his Thunderbird, and the job he knows how to do.

* * *

The next call from the comm in the center of the room had been to the hospital’s security for confirmation that John was missing. The ICU had been locked down, and then the hospital proper. Scott had dropped off the line, and Virgil had been the one to ask icy, furious questions of the poor GDF representative who ended up dealing with the family. When the call had closed, Virgil, eternally temperate and calm, had gone stalking out of the lounge and put a fist through his latest canvas up in his studio loft. He’d needed a few more minutes to cool off before coming back down.

Penelope had crossed the room, left the little nest of the lounge to put in a call to Parker, her best and most useful resource on the ground in Zurich. Kayo’s just thankful that Lady Penelope had the foresight she lacked, and that there _is_ someone dependable on the ground in Zurich. She’s got her hands full with the three youngest boys, all on their feet and clamouring to go with her.

“What part of _grounded_ are you failing to understand?” Kayo asks, her hands on her hips, glaring down at the three youngest Tracys. “Lockdown. This is _exactly_ why. Scott’s already ditched his security detail, and I’m going to have to launch in the next five minutes if I want to beat him to Zurich, so there’s not going to be any further discussion. You three are _staying here_. Where you’re _safe_. Island airspace is being monitored. No one’s coming anywhere near this family until we know what’s going on, and I’m _certainly_ not bringing any of you into harm’s way. End of discussion.”

This is answered with a chorus of protest, pleading from three young men who can’t bear to be told that they’re not allowed to save people. Brains has taken Grandma Tracy by the arm and escorted her to a seat, talking softly and rationally, comforting the family matriarch. This, in Kayo’s opinion, is where the boys should be directing their attention, but they’ve all been raised to take action. None of them are the type to sit around while someone’s in trouble, and sometimes it’s to their detriment.

There’s a snap as Penelope’s compact closes, and she looks up, waves Kayo off towards the passage down to the hangar. “Go. We’ll be fine here. _Boys_.” Her voice rises a few stern, commanding decibels and (not coincidentally) it’s a great deal like the tone of voice their mother used to use. “ _Settle_. We’re going to do everything we can, but we can do none of it from here. Patience, _please_ , and trust Kayo and I to do our jobs. Virgil, Alan, take care of your grandmother and wait for news. Gordon, Brains, come with me, we’re going to set up some place where we can broadcast live for a press conference.”

Kayo does as Penelope says and turns to leave without a further word. The truth is, she hasn’t gotten the chance to do her job yet. The threats to her family have come too fast, from too many places, and she’s still reeling and off-balance at the notion that it may be too late for John. That—if it’s her uncle who’s the cause of all this anguish and that he’s finally turned his attention towards harming her family—there may never even have _been_ a chance to save him.

* * *

Parker’s advantages are unique when it comes to criminality. In some ways, he and Ned have a lot in common, though neither knows it. A criminal past, a short military career to follow it. Connections to powerful people. Debts. A life of service.

It’s long years since Parker was fully pardoned for the checkered past that had caught Lord Creighton-Ward’s attention initially. Lord Hugh and his man Aloysius had been partners in espionage for the duration of the Global Conflict, back when the stakes had been higher and the work had been dirtier. Hugh’s retirement had been to his philanthropy and his wealth and his sprawling country estate. Parker’s retirement had been into the service of Lord Creighton-Ward’s precocious daughter and her own fledgling career in international espionage. A gentler, easier job, such as it was.

These are the connections that have had a call placed to the GDF Space Medicine Facility and have allowed Parker full, free reign of the facility to help in the search for John.

Parker’s loyalty to the Creighton-Wards is built on a foundation of honor and comradeship and an adopted uncle’s affection towards the sort of daughter he would have wished to have himself. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for the Lady Penelope, and he’s currently putting his wily old criminal’s mind to the task of just what _he_ would have done if asked to kidnap a patient from an ICU ward. There’d been less than twenty minutes between the last time the Tracys had seen their brother and the discovery that he was missing. The GDF facility has been put into lockdown, the security systems are being scoured, and Scott Tracy will be en route from New York as soon as he’s got a clear flight path over the Atlantic.

There are armed men in the hallways, guards on all exterior doors. A perimeter around the hospital is being established, and local authorities in Zurich are being contacted. Everyone’s preparing for a hostage situation.

But if it had been him, Parker wouldn’t have gone far. With a hostage in dubious condition, and security as tight as it is around a GDF facility? There are other ways. And Parker’s found a drop of blood in the hallway outside of John’s room and cast a speculative eye towards the service elevator at the end of the corridor.

 


	18. very little he wouldn’t do if ordered

If Kayo hadn’t been with him, Alan wouldn’t have made it home from the asteroid rescue. He would have been stranded, alone and cut off from his family, falling into fire and death. If Gordon had decided to board the extraction platform where Ned had been trapped, he would have been locked inside, and the platform would’ve plummeted over a cliff, and crushed or poisoned or drowned, Gordon would’ve been dead. The goal’s always been to kill one of them. But the intent has never been to be _direct_ about it. There’s a certain necessity in these things appearing to be accidents.

Ned’s loyalty to the Hood is bought and paid for, and looming in the dark in front of John, there’s very little he wouldn’t do if ordered, provided the price were right. At the moment, he’s failed to execute the order he’d been given, and absent of any further instruction, he’s been let off his chain. A rough, calloused hand shoots out and snatches John’s jaw, blunt fingers jerking his chin upward until he’s staring into Ned’s shadowed face. A slight narrowing of a pair of glinting brown eyes is the only warning and then there’s a blinding flash of pain as the back of Ned’s hand catches him solidly across the face, sets his head ringing viciously.

“I had a job to do, boy, and I don’t appreciate not getting to do it,” Ned spits, and John flinches involuntarily at the sheer menace in the man’s voice. It’s possible he’s just done something extremely stupid, but it had been the only chance he could see. “There’s a word needs having with the bossman, and you’d best hope you can still be useful.”

“They know I’m in trouble,” John manages, a little stupidly. “There’s…they’re getting a distress signal all through the hospital. Someone’ll figure it out. My brothers—”

“Aren’t here right now,” Ned answers curtly, and lifts a finger to his ear, presumably an earpiece. “Yeah, boss. Yeah, one minute.” His gaze stays fixed on John, though his other hand goes to a device on his belt and unclips it. He flicks a cover off of a button with his thumb and then presses it, short and sharp.

His face flares with light from beneath his collar, and suddenly Ned’s face is overlaid with one that John’s never seen before but recognizes by the sudden sickening grip of dread around his chest. Bald, hook-nosed, and leering down at him, Ned leans right in, his hands gripping the arms of the wheelchair. It’s still Ned. But the hologram overlaying his face is sharp and bright and intensely detailed, flickering slightly in the dark. The Hood’s blazing green eyes fix on John’s own like he can really see them. John has the jarring, disconnected realization that he’s never actually been frightened of another person before now.

“John Tracy. It was very challenging to find the silver lining when you failed to die horribly in space. Do you continue to insist upon making my life difficult?” The voice reverberates from a speaker on the device, returned to Ned’s belt. John’s not sure what the answer to this is supposed to be, but the Hood continues before he can say anything. “You’ve got something I want, John. There’s an AI aboard your space station, and you _will_ give it to me.”

“I _can’t_.”

That’s just the truth, though it’s answered with another sharp blow, one that jars his teeth against each other, sets his tongue bleeding again in the place where he’d bitten it nearly five days ago. The entire world lurches as Ned’s grip shifts on the wheelchair, and John’s tumbled painfully to the floor. For a moment it seems as though he might be able to struggle to his hands and knees and at least attempt to get away, but between vertigo and gravity there’s nothing for it. He spits a mouthful of blood and nearly follows it with water and pretzels that, in hindsight, had actually been rather stale. The notion that he’d been too polite to say anything at the time is a bizarrely ironic detail for his brain to snag on, and a rising bubble of hysteria nearly resolves itself into panicky laughter before he’s just right at the edge of hyperventilating, helpless and frightened.

Again with that oily, infuriatingly calm voice, “It wasn’t a question of your ability. Your AI—EOS? Has it really _named_ itself? How quaint—belongs to _me_. With or without your help, John Tracy, I’m going to take what’s mine. If you can be useful to me in getting it, then I may have enough of a reason to let you live. Dead, I’d only hoped you might get your father’s attention.”

“W-what?” John’s never had Scott’s bravado or Virgil’s stubborn silence. Gordon would almost certainly be mouthing off by now, and Alan—John can’t even imagine Alan in this situation. He remembers talking to his brothers, remembers seeing them all, blue shadows like always, but he’s suddenly seized with regret for not having gone home sooner. Brains and Kayo and _Grandma_ , Grandma who’d just wanted him to come home. Take a break, come home, it’s time. It’d been too long and now it’s too late, and it’s because of his father, and his absence—his loss, his death—whatever it was that led to Scott calling off the search. That thing that John had never known how to come to terms with. Except— “Dad. M-my dad?”

The laugh that answers this is hollow and hideous, and Ned crouches and grabs a handful of John’s hair, jerks him halfway upright and then further upward to his knees. He can’t help a strangled cry of pain and protest, even as Ned’s other hand, gloved, cinches tight around his throat and chokes his voice short. He can still breathe, but barely, and his fingers scrabble uselessly at Ned’s wrist of their own accord.

And then there’s that ghost of a face, shining and unnaturally bright and filling his entire field of view. For a moment it flickers and both faces, servant and master, are overlaid. But it’s the Hood’s voice that answers him, even as Ned brings the strange multitool up, presses it tight to the side of John’s neck. “Everything your father owes you is what I plan to take back, John Tracy. I’ll see you again very soon. For now I’m happy to watch this delightful mess you’ve landed yourself in. You’ll know when to look for me.”

The jolt of electricity that follows this statement is enough to flood John’s entire being with agony, scorching his every thought away into a searingly bright landscape of pure white pain. And then nothing. For what seems like a very long time, just nothing.

 


	19. four points of purple bruising

It’s Parker who finds him, because he had said that he would.

Parker’s mental image of John has always been much younger than John actually is. For Parker, the second of the Tracy boys is eternally caught at a tall, skinny twenty years old, giving a visiting Lady Penelope a tour of the MIT campus.

It had been the first time Parker had met John, though he had a long acquaintance with Jefferson Tracy through Lord Creighton-Ward. Money calling to money, as it tends to. Parker remembers, very distinctly, a late-autumn stroll across the lush New England campus and catching a bemused smile over John’s shoulder from Lady Penelope, demure and taciturn as always. John had been the first of Jeff’s sons she’d encountered, and the two had been friends almost immediately. In Parker’s memory, John’s a vibrant, passionate young man, in rolled up shirt-sleeves and glasses, chattering animatedly about some esoteric branch of astrophysics.

At first sight of the still, empty-looking figure crumpled on the floor of the hospital’s main generator room, Parker’s grimly certain that the younger man’s just been left dead. John looks like the absence of everything Parker remembers about him. He’s briefly thankful that none of his family has to see their brother in this state. As the manservant hits a switch on the wall and crosses the threshold, John remains pale and still and leached of all colour by the bright fluorescent light that floods the room. There’s a wheelchair toppled onto its side next to him, and it’s not until Parker crouches beside him and gingerly lays a hand on John’s shoulder that he can tell he’s even still breathing.

The relief that hits him is unexpectedly affective, and there’s a sort of realization of just how much John’s been through. Someone’s hit him hard enough for a blue-black bruise to blossom high across his cheek, darkening the hollow underneath his right eye. Parker’s eyes narrow as he gently tilts John’s chin up. There is a pair of contact burns just below the line of his jaw, stubbled lightly with ginger-gold. He catches sight of the contusions on his throat, four points of purple bruising. Simple brutality at first glance, but more subtly, a tacit indication that whoever had put his hands on John had been fully capable of killing him.

And hadn’t. This, perhaps, is the most chilling thing, the thing that sombers the relief and has Parker carefully looking the young man over for any further sign of injury. He stops as he carefully shifts John’s shoulders, turns him onto his back, and is answered with a low, resistant groan of pain.

“Oh, there now, son,” the older man murmurs, even as a pair of bleary blue eyes flicker open, darting around the room in a panic before finding and fixing on Parker’s face. “There now, you’re safe. You’re all right.”

“…Dad?”

This, unbeknownst to Parker, is just John echoing back the last thing he can remember saying, though he doesn’t know why this is the only thing he can think of. There’s another painful tug at the older man’s heart, even as he gets an arm around John’s upper back, gently pulling him off the floor, shifting him a few feet backwards so he can lean against the wall. “Afraid not, lad. Only Parker. Easy now.”

“ _Dad_.” This is repeated insistently, and with a hand still steadying John’s upper arm, it’s apparent that he’s shaking like a leaf. Shock, more than likely, and the chill of cold concrete walls of the subbasement. Parker shrugs out of his eternally present leather jacket and tucks it snugly around John’s shoulders. The scent of leather and aftershave jerks him abruptly back to the fact that there’s something he needs to know about his father, something someone said. Parker’s hand on his shoulder is gentle, but John cringes away from the contact. His eyes don’t quite seem to focus as he stares around the room again, repeating himself. “Dad, my _dad_.”

 _Bad_ shock, if the boy’s casting about for his dead father. Parker frowns, removes his hand from John’s arm. Instead, he holds his palm out, nudges John’s fingers. “No, Master John. Here, lad, take my hand. There, there you are. Give ’er a squeeze, go on. Feel that? Now, look here. You see me? Just Parker. It’s just this sorry old face of mine, but it’s glad to see you, John. Let’s have a few deep breaths, now.” Parker takes a great huff of breath, demonstrating, until John manages a few quick, shuddering gasps in answer. “Coming along now, Master John?”

There’s a quick, tight nod. “Mmm. Mmhm. Parker. And…and L-Lady Penelope? Penny?”

“…hold that thought, Master John. Keep on with the breathing, now.”

Parker has a slim leather billfold in his jacket, though he carries cash in a tight roll in his front pocket and has done for years. His wallet is the equivalent of Lady Penelope’s compact, though far less frequently employed. He flips this open and puts a call in to Lady Penelope. It’s answered almost immediately. Penelope is still sharp-eyed and intent, and there had been the unspoken edict that her driver wasn’t to call back without news. “Parker. Have you…”

“Found him, m'lady. Bit roughed up, but not more than a few hard knocks attained t'wisdom.” This is a bit of an understatement, but Parker’s mostly trying to keep his tone light, unconcerned. “He’s quite safe. Shook up some. Not said what’s happened. Here, m'lady.”

Parker lifts John’s hand and transfers the open wallet and its little blue hologram into his trembling palm. Then he shifts off his creaky knees and sits himself down with his back to the wall. Next to John, not quite near enough to touch him.

Penelope is only three inches tall, blue and transparent but even so, she’s always had a grounding sort of presence. The relief written on her features is near heartbreaking, but only for Parker, who knows just how well the Lady can cover her softer emotions. “John, thank heavens. Oh, my dear friend, I’m so terribly sorry.”

Holograms are an odd sort of object to take comfort from, but they’re far nearer to John’s norm than anything else that’s happened to him in the last week. “Lady Penelope. Please, my…my dad—”

There’s a long moment of silence.

Lady Penelope’s gaze flickers to Parker before she replies, a carefully probing question. “…have you _seen_ your father, John?”

This seems to trip him up for a moment, and Parker looks away, even as Penelope keeps her eyes fixed on John. “No. No, but—the Hood. He…it was him, but he wasn’t _here_ , it was the other man…I knew him from somewhere. Everyone knows him. Oh _god_ , Virgil got him that job. The GDF job, desk job, I-I don’t _remember_. Something. He was going to kill me, but…he _said_ something, I—”

“Breathing, Master John,” Parker instructs firmly, and takes his wallet back before this can edge into hysteria. It’s clearly not quite time for any sort of sensible account of just what happened. “M'lady, if you’re quite reassured, we’ll be off now. Is Master Scott on his way?”

“Kayo should beat him there, but narrowly.” Tiny and commanding, Penelope issues a final order. “And Parker? No one else lays a _hand_ on him. Permit no one so much as a _chance_. Am I entirely clear?”

Parker nods, and there’s a certain grimness to his features, a severity to the way his jaw sets. He’d been given the task, years ago, of taking the Lady’s orders. This is one he’ll happily follow, right to that raw edge of violence of his long-ago life. “Perfectly, m'lady.”

Lady Penelope and Parker, technically, work on a ten-year retainer from Jeff Tracy. They were hired for International Rescue’s protection, and the line that separates them from the boys is a line drawn in sand. Penelope keeps a loaded revolver in her purse. Parker’s never without a trusty old service pistol, with a round perpetually chambered in the barrel. Neither needs a weapon to kill someone.

Nor would either hesitate to do so, if given a reason.

 


	20. a bolt of pure white fire, straight from heaven

Between the cold of the concrete and the industrial harshness of the light and the high whine of generators, John’s less of a person and more of a tangled mess of sensations. His hands are shaking, and he can _feel_ them shaking, feel the pain in face and his throat and his fingers—always and _especially_ his fingers—like threads he can’t quite catch hold of. His apprehension of just what’s going on is still only fair to middling, but instead of the general haze that the week before has been, there are clear, delineated gaps between sharp flares of memory.

Not that anything he remembers is particularly pleasant, but it’s better than nothing. Ramirez, only he hadn’t been. Pretzels, little knotted loops between his fingers, dry and smooth. Water in a plastic cup, an odd, bitter aftertaste. That funny drop in his stomach, the way descending elevators have always made him feel. Darkness. Something warm and heavy across his knees. A low, urgent voice, exhorting him to do something _impossible_.

And EOS. Except John can’t think about EOS, because she’s trapped somewhere and alone and taken and it’s all his fault. He’s failed her, though he doesn’t remember how or why.

This thought is awful and distressing, and it rips the air out of his lungs, tears up his throat like panic and grief and guilt, because of course he feels all those things, and—and…

There’s that steadying reminder again: “Deep breaths, Master John.”

Breathing helps. Being told to breathe with a hand clasping his shoulder helps more. John’s tilted his head back to rest against the rough surface of the wall behind him, opened his airway, just breathing. The air of the generator room is charged with static and has that faint, electrical smell of ozone. This is the way TB5 smells, that same clean scent of the air charged by electricity after a thunderstorm, the scent of the upper atmosphere. And leather and sandalwood, Parker’s jacket lined in dark grey silk, a little tight around his shoulders but warm.

He slides slowly out of feeling too much to feeling too little, the slow calm of breathing giving way to numbing, necessary shock. He’s tired, _again_ , hurt and exhausted and useless and so very, very far from his sphere of normal that the only logical course is just to check out. He’s retreated and withdrawn, even as Parker gradually starts to coax him off the floor and back into the wheelchair that had brought him here in the first place.

Though they’re out the door and down the hallway and headed for the elevator, it’s under none of his own power. A certain blankness has taken hold of John, like some part of him has snagged on the door and been torn out, left behind shredded edges at the place where it used to be. Part of him is just going to stay trapped in that basement room for a long, long time to come.

John shivers a little, even as the elevator door slides softly closed and Parker’s hand leaves the handles and squeezes his shoulder again. It helps less than it did the last time.

* * *

Parker’s quietly, privately mourning the young man in his memory, because that version of John has been replaced with this one. The boy Parker remembers is only just out of adolescence, youthful and slender. In reality, the man he’s become is nearly twenty-eight years old, and the only barest inch shorter than his older brother at six-three barefoot. Parker’s a flat six feet in his thick-soled boots, and when he’d held out a hand to help John to his feet, the forearm he’d caught to steady the younger man had been all lean muscle. John’s long since grown into himself.

But the spark’s gone out of him, and Parker’s only too familiar with the stillness that’s taken hold in its place. There are sounds and smells and sights that’ll make John flinch for the rest of his life, or at least for a good long stretch of it. Parker, for all his history, isn’t a man who’d wish violence upon anyone. Least of all upon someone utterly unprepared for it.

God help the men who’ve inflicted it upon John.

John had been drugged and dazed and alone with the hands of strangers raised against him. Parker is the very model of control, so the hand _he_ has on John’s sagging shoulder doesn’t tighten at the thought. Parker’s fingers don’t clench as he imagines the fear that must have been in him—the bright, earnest young man he’d known almost from boyhood—the way he would have clawed desperately at the hand about his throat, because that’s not something one can help in that situation. Parker knows _that_ from personal experience. His hand leaves John’s shoulder and closes instead upon the push-handle of the wheelchair—white knuckled.

There’s a soft chime as the elevator reaches the main floor, and the doors slide open again. Only one of them reacts.

* * *

Jefferson Tracy had been a righteous man.

But he’s got _nothing_ on his eldest boy.

Thunderbird 1 had crossed the Atlantic and most of continental Europe in under twenty minutes. Kayo’s not quite experienced enough in Thunderbird S to have beaten him there. Though Shadow itself is more than capable, Scott’s been flying since he was _Alan’s_ age, and Alan’s good, but he’s not actually _that_ much better than Scott. The lawyer Scott had strapped into the passenger seat had survived the journey mostly intact, and more importantly, still able to practice law. Scott had made the mental note to hire lawyers with stronger stomachs before he’d gone bearing down on the hospital’s main entrance, still in uniform, daring the guards on the door to ask him for ID. They hadn’t.

Virgil’s a hurricane and Gordon’s a riptide, but Scott Tracy is a bolt of pure white fire, straight from heaven.

And he’s cut a scorched path behind him through everyone who’s tried to get in his way. _No_ , he will not wait to talk to the hospital’s CO. _No_ , he doesn’t care whose authorization he needs to be here. _No_ , he doesn’t want Colonel Casey involved. _No_ , he won’t stop yelling. Where’s John? Where the _hell_ is John, and how could they have let this happen?

Scott’s not taking calls, or he would have heard from Penelope by now. GDF hospital staff are attempting to keep the eldest Tracy confined to the lobby, Scott’s poor tag-along lawyer is in a legal battle on multiple fronts with more than one branch of the GDF’s security and the head of the facility’s legal team. When the doors of the elevator ding open, it’s in the midst of a shouting, furious din around the firestorm of temper in the middle.

There’s that sense eldest siblings have about their younger. Four years between Scott and John, and usually thousands of miles, and Scott’s head still swivels towards the sight of his brother. Disparate politics, values, beliefs. Scott and John aren’t similar, never have been. But they’re brothers, and they’ve been brothers for longer than anyone else in the family, from that very first time Scott had laid eyes on that tiny, sleeping bundle in his mother’s arms.

In a hospital, just like this one.

Scott lays eyes on his brother again, and the whole world stops around him. His had been the loudest voice, shouting, and he stops. Stops shouting, anyway, he’s crossing the lobby before he realizes it, running, and he doesn’t stop until he _is_ stopped by Parker’s hand, butted up against his chest.

The bodyguard, appropriately, has stepped in front of John and held a hand out to slow Scott’s approach. “Gently, now,” Parker murmurs. “Go easy with him, poor lad’s been a bit knocked about.”

Scott’s voice slips away from him, “He’s been _what_ —?”

“ _Gently_.”

This last is hissed in a tone of strict, military command, and Scott’s got that obedience hardened into him. Parker steps aside, and Scott falls to his knees in front of his brother, reaches for John’s bandaged wrist and clasps it tightly. This is what it takes for John to even notice him, and Scott’s eyes are blurring even as his voice runs away from him again, but soft now, imploring and broken.

“ _Johnny_. _God_ , Johnny, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Christ, _look_ at you, John. I’m just so sorry. Please, Johnny, for all of it, for everything, this never should’ve happened. You never should’ve been alone in this. John? John, can…can you hear me?”

It’s unclear how much of this John apprehends, his gaze is a little blank and distant and that’s saying nothing of the fact that one of his eyes is blackened. Rising onto his knees, Scott’s fingertips catch his brother’s jaw, just as gently as possible, turn his face towards the light. There’s a hiss of fury through his teeth as Scott remembers the way he’d wiped blood off John’s face, in the same place where there’s now an ugly, purple bruise. Scott hasn’t even seen the marks on his brother’s throat.

But before he can, faintly, with a slow, shuddering shake of himself, John blinks and finally meets his brother’s blue eyes, mirroring his own. “Scott,” he starts, hesitant. His fingers come up, tremoring slightly, to touch the hand that’s caught his face, assuring himself it’s real. And then, “Scotty. Hey. Hey, Scott.”

And then to hell with gentle, John’s always been tougher than he looks. Scott’s halfway to his feet as he pulls his brother into a hug, fierce and final, and breaks down the way he’s needed to all week, sobbing into his brother’s shoulder.

John, in spite of the fact that it’s been almost three years since he’s seen Scott and that Scott doesn’t _cry_ , knows he’s at least supposed to pat his brother on the back in this scenario.

“Hey. Hey, Scotty. Scott, it’s okay.”

 

 


	21. the motion of a body in space

John’s never set out to do it on purpose, but on a few occasions he’s fallen asleep in zero-G. It’s not intentional as much as it is sometimes he just lets it happen, doesn’t fight it. It takes a hell of an ordeal for John to permit himself just to let go and drift. Simple physics, the motion of a body in space. It’s harder to do than it seems it should be, for John. It takes relinquishing control of his limbs and just _stopping_. John’s never been good at stopping. John’s is a life in constant motion and that’s how he prefers it. But sometimes there’s nothing else that helps.

It takes giving in to the freefall, the balance of orbit and gravity that keeps him moving around the Earth, and just letting himself drop into neutral. Physically, there’s nothing more liberating than zero-G, if he can let himself slip sideways into it, into just existing. Drifting, not trying, in silence and stillness and just—just letting it all stop, for a while. It takes him by surprise sometimes, how badly he _needs_ to do it. It’s why he can’t do it on purpose, the apathy of inertia is just too tempting. He loses hours of time, falls into dreamless sleep, and doesn’t wake up until he bumps into something and finds himself wedged against the ceiling or caught on an interior bulkhead. It’s the closest he thinks he’s ever come to non-existence, and while it’s peaceful and necessary, it’s also a little bit terrifying.

He’s never done it mentally before. That’s what this feels like. And it’s _awful_.

When he clicks back into himself the first time, he doesn’t know where he is. It’s dark and he’s still tired. His face hurts and there’s an odd, bitter aftertaste in his mouth again, and a glass on the bedside, half full of water, half full of moonlight. He watches it for a long time, though it’s just still, just an object. He imagines the way it would float in zero-g, doing that instinctive mental calculation in his head, the motion of a body in space. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but then, just drifting, he never does.

* * *

The second time, John wakes up in a bed that makes him forget about gravity. A little. In John’s (admittedly patchy) recent memory, it easily tops a GDF hospital bed. It’s better than the lightly padded shelf he calls a bed aboard TB5. It doesn’t beat zero-g, but then, nothing does.

He doesn’t get blankets in zero-g, or pillows. They’re impractical and unnecessary. Even with the gravity ring running aboard TB5, he sleeps pressed tight to his little shelf, and there’s no need for a blanket in an environment that’s temperature and pressure controlled.

There are probably about fifty pillows on this bed, and he’s buried his face in about half of them.

Twenty-five of the fifty pillows, the half he’s not pressed his face into, are not actually pillows at all but a down comforter. White and plush and that paradoxical combination of heavy and soft. The sheets are cool and smooth and loose enough that he doesn’t feel trapped but tight enough not to tangle. The whole world around him is soft and white and yielding, and he breathes in the smell of crisp linen and fresh air and sunlight.

He stretches a little, without meaning to, and reflexively tries to catch himself before he falls off his shelf. But he’s not on a shelf, and his long legs don’t meet a hard plastic edge, even as he uncurls himself from an almost fetal position. His eyes are a little dry and blurry still, and he can’t see beyond the bounds of the mattress, because the mattress seems like it goes for miles. John would have to throw himself out of this bed if he wanted to fall off, and that’s not happening anytime soon.

The hospital gown’s gone, but there’s no one else around, and anyway, John’s pretty sure it would take some serious excavation to get him out of bed at this point. His face still hurts and he doesn’t know where he is, but these seem like concerns more than problems.

There are worse places to start to pull oneself back together in than a five-star hotel in Zurich.

The glass of water is still by the bedside, but it’s been filled, topped nearly to the brim. A pure, clear column of sunlight, refracting the light from the window beyond it. The window: a white-bounded square of clear blue sky over bluer water, lush greenery, all the colours that aren’t this vibrant from orbit. A city. Some city he doesn’t recognize, though for some bizarre reason he’s pretty sure it’s Zurich.

John could do with a glass of water.

It means pushing himself up onto his elbows, shuffling sore, stiff limbs across cool sheets and straining slightly to reach for it once he thinks he’s gotten close enough. He hasn’t, his depth perception is off, and the tips of his fingers brushing the curve of the glass are enough to knock it to the ground with a high, splintering sound.

This is the worst thing that’s happened to him recently, if recently is only considered to be the last ten minutes, because now he _really_ wants the glass of water.

But not quite badly enough not to sink back below the blankets with a sigh and nuzzle up against a heap of pillows, closing his eyes again.

Only this time there’s the creak of a door, and he’s not permitted just to drop back off again, because there’s a salt-and-pepper head peeking in through the doorframe, and—

“Good morning, Master John. Back in the world again?”

The first time John had met Parker, he’d been giving Lady Penelope a tour of the MIT campus. He’d agreed to do it as a favour to his father, who’d been entertaining _her_ father, whilst some business deal between them was completed. It was the first time John had ever met anybody with a bodyguard, and the older man had been vaguely intimidating, serious, and no-nonsense with hooded eyes and a smile that only seemed to extend to the lovely young blonde woman who was his charge. By the end of the tour, John had managed to get on the Englishman’s good side and been relieved for it. He’s never had anything but respect for Parker, and not for the first time, he’s glad to see him.

John hasn’t seen Parker in half a decade, and he looks older than John remembers. Shorter, too, compact and wiry. But no worse for that, his bright blue eyes crinkle with a genuine smile and that nose of his is always more astonishing that memory serves. His voice is surprisingly soft, and as he opens the door wider to cross the room, he’s not wearing his trademark leather jacket, nor his leather gloves. Instead, just a smart green turtleneck, and a shoulder holster, with a neat, compact little pistol tucked against his chest.

Turning over and pushing himself up, John leans back against the pillows and says the first thing that comes into his head. “Have you shot anybody with that?”

The question only surprises one of them and it isn’t Parker. Apparently the part of John’s brain that’s responsible for tact hasn’t quite returned to normal operating parameters, but Parker just chuckles. “Not recently, Master John. Have someone in mind?”

That’s a better question. John’s got several people in mind, but he isn’t sure how much of what he remembers is really reliable.

Ned Tedford, though it seems more doubtful than ever that this is actually the man’s name. The Hood, or the image of him anyway. It’s really hard to say. “I don’t know. Should I?”

Parker shrugs and enters the room properly, crossing the floor to stand next to the bed. He looks John over, doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he’s doing so. “I’m not the one what was knocked about by some brute in a hospital basement.”

John’s fingertips go gingerly to his cheek, his jaw, his throat. Every single burst of violence is a memory written into him now, indelible. There’s still a numbing buzz of shock in his system, insulating each moment, but it’s almost entirely faded, and there’s a truth that won’t be diminished. “…this could’ve been a lot worse.”

Parker nods and claps a hand on his shoulder. “Quite right. Best not to dwell on it.”

Easier said than done, but John tries his best. The world’s been rendered down into this one single room, all bright light and white softness and the sound of birdsong and the smell of the breeze. He aches all through, but he feels sharper and realer than he has in days. And there’s Parker. God, but he _is_ glad to see Parker. John has the impression that Parker’s the only reason why he’s here and safe and sane right now, but he’s not entirely sure why. Probably it’s about time he started to work on that. “I should get up.”

“In your own time, Master John,” the older man agrees mildly.

“I haven’t got any pants.”

“Her Ladyship had sent you a robe, and I’ve had it laundered and pressed. It’s across the end of the bed. I shan’t look, Master John.” Parker smiles slightly and turns his back with a smart snap of his heels.

Well. It seems rude to stay lying down now that he has company, so John carefully pulls the sheets and blankets off and reaches out to retrieve the robe. He remembers it from the hospital, but the anti-bacterial, chemical scent has been washed out of it. Out of habit, he reads the label—100% cashmere, soft and yielding in his hands. Deep, charcoal grey. Made in England. Monogrammed across the pocket, JGT. So utterly typical of the sort of thing Penelope does that John finds himself remembering just how many years they’ve been friends. It brings a funny, warm feeling to the center of his chest as he shrugs the robe on.

Getting out of bed is a dizzying affair, but though he’d kept his word and kept his back turned, Parker’s there in what seems like an instant with a hand at John’s elbow and the other at the small of his back.

“Steady on,” Parker cautions gently, though he has to take less of John’s weight than either of them expect. He’s dizzy for only a few moments, solved with closed eyes and a few deep breaths. Eventually John nods and Parker lets him go, steps back and looks up at John with a slight narrowing of his eyes. “Blimey, lad. Have you grown, or am I shrinking in me old age?”

This gets the first real smile from John since the last time he was aboard Thunderbird 5. “Realistically speaking, probably a bit of both. Microgravity. I get taller.”

“Sign me up for the next jaunt into orbit. There’s cans in the kitchen I can’t reach lately. I haven’t had a good tin of beans in months.”

 _This_ gets the first real laugh.

 


	22. a hell of a mess, John

The door of the bedroom opens and Scott’s on his feet before he realizes there’s no need to stand in his brother’s presence. It somehow seems like the thing to do, and for a moment they’re both just standing, staring at each other across the back of the couch. Parker, unnoticed and unremarked upon, slips out of the room to retake his position at the hotel suite’s front door. Kayo hasn’t made an appearance yet, busy investigating the circumstances that led to the whole unfortunate affair. Scott’s already had to convince her that interviewing John can wait, at least until he’s had some time to collect himself.

It’s still strange to see John in the flesh.

And Scott doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to cover for the fact that he can’t _help_ staring at his younger brother, who’s been through hell and looks it, but is still taller and straighter and more intent than Scott ever remembers. Twelve hours of sleep have evidently done him some good, though he’s still pale and the bruises are still alarming and technically he’s still sick.

“You’ve still got malaria,” Scott blurts, because it seems important to note and at least it’s something to say. “There’s pills you need to take for the next two weeks.”

There’s a wry quirk of a smile, and Scott feels better still, though his instinct is to catch his brother’s arm and help him across the room. But John’s managing just fine without him. “I feel like I’ve got _something_. I don’t know how the hell I’ve got malaria. Didn’t Dad _cure_ malaria?”

“Well, not _single-handedly_. But yeah. That was Dad. I knew you’d remember.”

Scott sits back down and John takes the armchair across from him. There’s a platter of fresh fruit on the coffee table that Scott’s been ignoring and a pitcher of clear water. John’s long fingers reach out for an apple, pluck it off the platter. There’s a twist of his wrists, and a crisp snap of apple skin and then he’s tossed Scott half of the fruit, and Scott’s caught it out of age-old habit. For a while that’s the only sound, bites of sweet white flesh, the first thing John’s eaten since a handful of pretzels in a hospital room.

It’s just like old times, except for the fact that they’re in a hotel in Zurich and John has malaria and a black eye from someone who’d wanted to kill him. Scott has to keep his eyes down to keep from staring, keep from gnawing his lower lip and fussing over John, who’s fine. Clearly. He’s upright and coherent and alert and that’s better than he’s been in a week. John’s fine.

In fact, John’s the one who speaks first, and it’s the question that Scott’s been waiting for. It’s the question Scott doesn’t want to answer. “What happened?”

“A hell of a lot.”

John pauses a moment. “I know I got sick,” he offers, as though this isn’t the most obvious thing in the world. “And I have…I’ve got bits and pieces, I guess, but it’s patchy, and I don’t _know_ what actually happened to me, what parts I dreamt, what parts I imagined—it all kind of blurs together. I guess I was _really_ sick.”

“Understatement of the year, Johnny.” Scott’s answering laugh is a little hollow. _Yeah, you got sick. You got really, really sick, you got_ malaria _. Dad got rid of malaria and you still managed to get malaria, ergo: someone_ gave _you malaria. Probably the Hood. You were dying. You were hauled out of orbit in an ambulance, you spent three days in a coma, you got kidnapped right out from under the GDF’s nose, and we still don’t know how or by whom or why. A_ lot _happened, and I don’t know where to start._

But he doesn’t say most of that. He’s still processing most of it himself, too much of it is still speculation, and John’s asking for facts. “It’s a hell of a mess, John,” Scott says finally, toying with the half a core of an apple he’s got left. That’s a fact. “I don’t really know where to start.”

“Tell me about EOS.”

Scott winces, because of course that’s the first thing John wants to know. And he _has_ to look up now, has to meet his brother’s bright blue eyes across the room and shake his head. “I tried to tell her to get off your system. Honest, I told her to wipe herself out and just take off, but she wouldn’t do it. She said she would rather wait for you, she didn’t wanna leave ’Five.”

The smile’s gone, but Scott hadn’t expected it to stick around. Things are grim, and of _course_ John’s gone right for the thing he’ll find most upsetting. And he presses on, with facts that Scott isn’t sure how he knows— “She’s on a GDF server, with all my code—TB5’s _entire_ operating system. Why?”

Scott takes a deep breath, starts to wade into the subject. “Thunderbird Five had a data breach.”

“Thunderbird Five doesn’t have data breaches.”

“Well, it did.”

“No, it didn’t, because that _doesn’t happen_. My systems are the best in the world, there’s no breaking the encryption on ’Five’s transmission relay. Or…I mean, it’s _theoretically_ possible, but there are maybe only three systems in the world powerful enough to handle that level of encoding. _Maybe_. And anyway, they—”

“John,” Scott interrupts, and shakes his head. This is going to be challenging. John’s stubborn. If John weren’t stubborn, he probably wouldn’t have scraped through the ordeal so far. Scott has to keep reminding himself to be grateful for the fact that John’s stubborn, because this is going to be difficult enough as it is. He continues, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “There was a data breach. Fact. The GDF seized the station. When they found EOS, they offlined it and locked it down. We haven’t had a full inventory of what was compromised, but every organization we’ve dealt with in the last year is banging on IR’s door, demanding to know what we’re going to do about it. I’ve…uh. I’ve got Penelope handling it. Gordon’s repping International Rescue publicly while I deal with everything else on the back end with Tracy Industries. I’ve been meeting primarily with your legal team—”

“My _legal_ team?”

“—because of the illegal AI that was found aboard your station. I brought a lawyer, he can probably explain it better than I can.”

“A _lawyer_. You brought me a lawyer. Things are bad enough that I need a bodyguard and a lawyer.” John’s sitting straight, stiff-backed, in his chair across the coffee table. There’s tension all through his back and shoulders, and that’s the last thing Scott wanted.

“—yeah.” There are bright points of colour rising on John’s pale cheeks, and Scott’s not sure he wants to subject his brother to this kind of stress. There’s a lot of information to process and very little of it is good. “Listen, John, I said it was a mess and if you’re not up to handling it—”

There’s still that intensity to him, those damn bright blue eyes, defiant, as John answers, “Someone has to.”

Scott feels a flush of heat rising in his own face, his own impulse to anger. John is stubborn. Just like the old days, John’s _always_ been stubborn. Nearly three years since Scott’s been face to face with the second eldest, and _god_ , is he ever stubborn. “Someone _is_. I’m not asking you to handle this, _no one_ expects you to handle this. This is big. It’s complicated. You’ve been through a lot and—”

“What are you going to do about EOS?”

Scott’s leaning forward in his seat on the couch, appealing to his brother, to reason. “EOS isn’t the priority here. First and foremost, we have to worry about your safety—about our family’s safety. The rug’s been pulled out from under the entire family, and until we’ve found our feet again, we can’t waste resources. We’re on the defensive, we’ve suspended all operations, and we’re not going to do anything drastic until this is all resolved. We’re being targeted and we need to make sure we—”

John cuts him off. “I don’t care about that.”

“ _Someone has to_ ,” Scott fires back, and rubs his eyes with his fingertips. He’s been riding the leading edge of a migraine for the past twenty-four hours, and his job is far from done. “John, I know you don’t remember much, but you were _godawful_ sick. You were in a coma, and we didn’t think you were coming out of it. We thought we were gonna lose you, none of us are just bouncing back from that. _You_ least of all. John, you _could’ve died_. I’d go so far as to say that probably you _should_ have died. Stop for a second and really _think_ about that.”

This was maybe the wrong thing to say. The way John’s expression sort of freezes, Scott regrets it immediately. It’s hard to say just how long John’s had his head back together, but it would be stupid, callous, to believe that he _hasn’t_ thought about that. And then, softly, “EOS is the only reason I didn’t.”

“Johnny—”

The brown eyes in the family belonged to their mother. Virgil and Gordon, both doe-eyed and gentle when calm, but with stony hard stares when angry. Scott and John and Alan all have their father’s penetrating gaze, eyes that flash blue fire when the cause is right and just. Scott can’t help wincing when John snaps at him, “ _What_? Don’t you dare tell me that that doesn’t matter.”

Scott takes a deep breath and tries a different tack, gentle and placating. “Of course it does. But EOS—”

John cuts him off again, and it’s not the fire in his eyes that has Scott on the back foot, it’s the raw, emotional edge to his voice. “—was all I had, and _she_ made the difference. I should be dead, but she didn’t let it happen. She’s not just a program, she’s not what you think, and I’m not…I can’t let them kill her, I can’t, I _won’t_. They don’t understand her, they…they can’t, no one does. You…You have to listen to me, Scott, I—” Faltering, suddenly. “I know you don’t understand about her, about EOS. No one understands. No one gets it, but I…I _promised_ her—”

Scott’s on his feet and across the room, even as John abruptly runs out of words and out of breath. The elder pours a glass of water and puts it into his brother’s shaking fingers and lays a hand on his shoulder as he drinks, half-mouthfuls, short swallows of cold water, in between getting his breath back. Scott’s voice softens further, and he just tries to be honest. “Listen, I didn’t mean to say she’s not worth saving. I’m just…John, I’m in way over my head here. I’m not Dad. I don’t know how to stare down a room full of lawyers when all I know to tell them is just that I want you to be safe. I don’t know if we _can_ do anything.”

“We save people. She saved me.”

“She’s not a person, John.”

Those blue eyes flash up again, blazing and defiant. “You don’t know that.”

 _Oh boy. I am not technically or philosophically qualified to have this discussion_. Scott shakes his head and has to evade the answer he wants to give. It’s not like John to get this emotional, and it’s got Scott worried. “There’s a lot I don’t know. We’ll try, that’s all I can say. But not until Kayo’s talked to you about what happened in the hospital, not until you’re back safe on the island.”

“I’m not going back until _she’s_ safe.”

Scott’s hand hasn’t left John’s shoulder, and he can feel the tension in his younger brother, can feel how he’s shaking. Scott had let himself believe, seeing John upright for the first time in days, that he was better than he looked. Scott doesn’t know what else to do but to gloss over this statement and to gently take his brother by the elbow, nudging him to get to his feet. “Take a shower, John,” he suggests, gently, always gently. You have to go gently with John. “Clear your head, I didn’t mean to get you upset. Kayo’ll be here soon, she’ll want to talk details. Try and get your head straight, you’re gonna need to think about what happened. I know this is all harder than it looks.”

There’s no answer from John, he just pulls free from Scott’s hand and crosses the room without a further word.

 

 


	23. to pull his armor back on

This shower’s bigger than his entire bedroom aboard Thunderbird 5, all impeccably clear glass walls and sleek marble tiles and six different showerheads positioned throughout, gleaming chrome. And, improbably, there’s a bench running the length of it—polished, slatted teak—that’s wider than his stationside berth. John can’t remember ever actually having a problem with his bunk aboard TB5, but it’s starting to look a little spartan in his memory.

No showers in zero-g, either.

Well, not technically. A Plexiglas chamber with pressurized jets that provide a scant quantity of recycled water on a four minute timer, and a stripped down routine that equates to about a three-minute shower on Earth. Just another task, necessary. But it’s not like Thunderbird 5’s interior gets dirty, so it’s not like there’s much to wash off. The environment is temperature and pressure-controlled, and John’s suit wicks away even minimal perspiration and gets dry cleaned in a special module at need.

So John’s not used to feeling grimy in his own skin, feeling sweat and the atmosphere of the hospital still clinging to him. He’d spent three days running a ridiculously high temperature, he’d needed to be put on a saline drip to make up for the fluids he’d lost to fever. Probably by now he should be sick of dense, oppressive heat and inescapable moisture.

Apparently not, though.

John turns every tap on full and fills the room with heat and so much steam it’s almost hard to breathe. But the hot water hits his skin and the steam fills his lungs and some of the ache starts to go out of him. He goes about it slower than usual, but it’s still only about five minutes before he’s clean, although soap that actually lathers instead of just acts as a mild antiseptic and surfactant is another thing he forgot about Earth. But by then he’s feeling the exertion of standing, and he lets himself drop onto the bench and take a little longer. The place is all white noise and heat, and John closes his eyes and studiously avoids thinking about anything.

After a while, as the steam and the warm air open up his pores, he rubs his palm over the line of his jaw, itchy and uncomfortably stubbled. The hair on his face comes in patchy ginger and bright blond, all at different rates. But the razor beside the sink isn’t electric like he’s used to, and his hands are still shaking too much to chance it. Scott could probably pull off a beard, but long years of military training prevent it from appealing to him even remotely.

Scott. John hadn’t seen Scott in almost three years. Scott had looked older than he did in holograms, his eyes a little shadowed, his hair slightly tousled, and wearing a suit and tie instead of his IR blues. When John had seen him in the hospital—when Scott had pulled him into a tight, almost painful embrace—Scott had been in uniform. Scott looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days either, pulling off that scruffy, five o'clock shadow the exact way that John can’t.

John’s already forgotten most of what he talked about with Scott.

It’s like it just didn’t quite stick, none of the words between them had snagged on the surface of his brain. It had been an argument, though Scott hadn’t once raised his voice. John had been the one to get angry. The last thing Scott had said had been the suggestion that John take a shower and clear his head. It seems like he’s cleared it a little too well.

He remembers stumbling slightly across the threshold of the bathroom. He remembers the way he’d been shaking, the way he’d stood in the middle of the room for a little too long with his eyes hot and threatened by the pressure of tears. There’d been a muddle of anger and grief and fear and he’d just drowned it all out in heat and white noise and pressure, and let the words wash away. And now he’s here, with stubble coarsening his jaw and hot water pounding on his slowly recovering body and deliberate emptiness inside his head.

Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, and a crisp knock on the door, calling him out of another little cocoon of warmth and safety and numbing silence.

Okay.

“Quite all right in there, Master John?”

“Fine,” he answers through the door, even as he starts to turn the water off. There are towels stacked on a bench by the shower door, big and thick and fluffy. On Thunderbird 5, his towel is microfiber and rolls down into a compact little package for storage. This one could almost wind twice around his narrow hips and hits the middle of his shins.

Parker’s been the very model of care and courtesy, but he also keeps a polite distance. He’s glad it’s Parker, because otherwise it would be Scott. John’s glad for the lack of Scott at his elbow as he tucks a towel around his waist and reaches over the sink to swipe steam off the mirror.

But it’s the bandages that draw his eye, still wrapped tight around his wrists and fingers. He doesn’t reach as far as his shadow in the mirror, he catches himself with his hand trembling, trying to grasp those threads of red pain. Probably he shouldn’t, but he does anyway, tugs the tape free and unwinds the gauze and can’t help a short, sharp catch of breath at the sight of his unbandaged fingers. The scars are ugly and the worst runs from the tip of his first finger to the palm.

The magnets in his fingertips had been wired in, electromagnetic coils connected to a biofilament that drew power from catalytic batteries in his wrists. All of this has been pulled out, and in a messy rush of emergency surgery, to prevent interference with the MRI. John’s still not completely sure why he needed an MRI, but it’s neither here nor there at this point. His wrists look slit open and stitched back together, raw and painful.

It feels like a violation. Almost more than anything else has so far, it feels like violence. Almost more than the _actual_ violence. They’ve taken something that was vital and important and _his_ and left him scarred and at a loss. John’s always been particular about his hands, with their long, pianist’s fingers. Everyone’s always surprised that it’s Virgil who’s musical, because Virgil’s hands are blunt and calloused. John’s got the elegant, slender fingers, but he’s also a little bit tone-deaf. But where Thunderbird 5 had been concerned, John had been a maestro. He’d been the one and only true master of his station.

At least, until EOS had come along.

EOS had hard-coded herself into TB5, belonged there in a way that was realer and purer than he ever had. He was a foreign object, the same as the magnets and batteries and biofilament he’d wired into his fingers. And they’ve ripped her out, torn every part of her systems free and sequestered her on some GDF server, some mainframe that was never built to handle her. His station is as empty and useless as his hands feel, absent their secret sixth sensation. And it’s only a fraction of what she would have felt. His fingers clench against the scars and he has to put EOS out of his mind, because he can’t help her like this. John takes slow, deep breaths of the still-warm, steamy air and forces himself to focus. Like everything else, he has to put it out of his mind.

John swipes a hand across the clouded surface of the mirror and stares hard at his reflection. It’s been long enough that he sometimes believes his eyes are _supposed_ to be the bright, gleaming green of his contact lenses. But looking past that. Past the bruising, past the ginger-gold stubble, past way he’s gotten a little gaunt. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s _really_ changed, illness and injury aside. His usually unbreakable composure is enamel-thin, and it’s been cracked from the inside out. That’s no good. John can’t function in a world where he lets himself lose hold of his emotions. He needs to pull his armor back on, needs to regain control of what people see from the outside.

Well. There’s a logical place to start that process.

The robe that Penelope had sent hangs on a hook on the back of the bathroom door. It’s a princely thing, rich and warm and plainly expensive. But it’s not the most valuable thing the Lady had sent. The robe had been a gift, her bodyguard is on loan. Parker’s a resource, and it’s time John started to make use of him.

So he shrugs the robe on again, shoulders the bathroom door open, and pretends his eyes are green. Pretends he can still see all the extra information, augmented reality layered over the world in front of him. Information has always been John’s means to exert control over the world, and more than anything else, he needs to regain control.

Parker’s waiting, as expected. He nods briefly to John, deferential. “Miss Kyrano is waiting for you, Master John.”

John had been supposed to clear his head, get his story straight, because Kayo’s going to want to know what happened. Kayo’s going to stare with those agate green eyes and her stern, serious tone and she’s going to be all hard edges and sharp questions about a place and a time and an event that John doesn’t want to cast his mind back towards. It’s done, it’s over. It’s old information. He doesn’t know any of the answers, doesn’t want to dwell on what’s already happened—those four points of bruising on his throat, where he can still feel calloused fingers and tight, awful pressure. It’s like Parker had said. Best not to dwell on it. Best to move forward. “I’m not ready to see her yet.”

“Of course, Master John. In your own time. Is there anything I can do—?”

“Yes, actually.” John squares his shoulders, stands as tall and straight as Scott always forgets he is. As tall as Parker remembers him. It takes effort. It’s going to take a lot of effort not to let himself slip backward with the pull of remembered trauma, fear of the people who’ve made a target of him. But the walls are going up, the way they did three years ago, and John’s marshalling himself behind them. People had needed him then. His family had needed him to be strong and implacable and self-possessed. Someone needs him now, even if no one else believes she does, even if everyone else is willing to give her up for lost.

You don’t give up on your family.

But first things first. John nods to Parker, gestures towards the robe he’s wearing. “Before anything else, I need a pair of pants.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Edited, polished, and updated as of 07/14/2016, gracious thanks to [ScribeOfRED](http://archiveofourown.org/users/scribeofred) for all her help and dedication <3


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